Afternoon Sports Brief - Brewers manager Ron Roenicke will be on NL staff for All Star Game

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Milwaukee Brewers’ manager Ron Roenicke will be on the National League coaching staff for the All Star Game to be played in Kansas City on July 10th. The coaching selections were announced today. And American League manager Ron Washington chose former Brewers’ manager Ned Yost to be on his staff since Yost now manages the team that’s hosting the game, the Kansas City Royals. Tony La Russa is coming out of retirement to manage the NL squad, since the honor normally goes to the skipper of each league’s team in last year’s World Series. Roenicke was the last manager to fall to La Russa’s champion Cardinals in 2011, as the Brewers lost the NL Championship Series to the Redbirds. La Russa also named New York Mets skipper Terry Collins to his All Star staff, along with the Saint Louis staff who was with him a season ago.

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The Brewers will try to even their series at Kansas City tonight. The Royals took the opener last night, when Luis Mendoza no hit the Brew Crew until the seventh inning. Billy Butler had the game winning single in the eighth and he’s been hot at home, with nine hits in his last 20 at bats at Kauffman Stadium for a .450 average. The Brewers have only won two of their last 10 Interleague contests, but Ryan Braun has been hot against American League opponents. Braun has a 17 game Interleague hitting streak, the longest such streak in the Majors, after he broke up Mendoza’s no hit bid. Milwaukee is now 12-16 on the road, and is 5-5 in their last 10 contests. Left hander Randy Wolf will start for the Brewers tonight against veteran Royals’ southpaw Jonathan Sanchez who’s making his first start since May seventh after having biceps tendinitis.

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The Green Bay Packers canceled their practice at mini camp today, as coach Mike McCarthy took the players on their annual team building and bonding session. McCarthy didn’t say where they were going, but some players tweeted that they went to a range to shoot sporting clays. Offensive lineman T.J. Lang tweeted that nobody got shot during the session, so that’s always a good thing. Tonight, players will also take part in a charity bowl athon put on by receivers’ coach Edgar Bennett. It benefits the Green Bay region’s Angel Fund for Children with Cancer. Tomorrow, the Packers will hold their final mini camp practice and it will be open to fans, starting at 10:45 across from Lambeau Field if it doesn’t rain. It’s the final major activity for the Packers before training camp begins on July 26th.

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The UW La Crosse men’s and women’s cross country teams will have the same coach for the first time ever. Derek Stanley will also be an assistant in the men’s and women’s track programs. That’s part of a reorganization which also increases the coaching time allocated to men’s head track coach Josh Buchholz and women’s track coach Pat Healy. Stanley was brought in soon on the same day that men’s cross country Don Fritsch announced his retirement. For the last year, Stanley coached the men’s and women’s cross country and track teams at Marietta College in Ohio.

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Milwaukee Wave Hall of Famer Tony Pierce has been named the new women’s soccer coach at Wisconsin Lutheran College. He has spent the last two seasons coaching the men’s and women’s teams at Lakeland College in Sheboygan. Before that, Pierce spent six years as an assistant men’s coach at UW Green Bay. He has also had head coaching jobs at Milwaukee Engineering, Concordia-Chicago, and Midland of Texas. And Pierce has been an assistant at UW Milwaukee, as well as Wisconsin Lutheran’s former women’s coach in the 1996 and 97 seasons. Pierce graduated from Wisconsin Lutheran in 1998 in education

Tags: wisconsin sports, sports, baseball, track