I’m an easy-going baseball fan. I don’t get too wound up (says me), and I really don’t expect too much. I’ve loved the Milwaukee Brewers since I was a kid. My first baseball game that I remember was at County Stadium. Funny, I don’t remember much about the Brewers at that time, but I remember Luis Tiant started for the Boston Red Sox. There was Bernie’s chalet out there in center field. The mobile home on top of the scoreboard. It was quite the event going to a game there. Special, to say the absolute least.
The Brewers made it to the World Series once — in 1982, while I was learning Chinese at DLI in Monterey. It was an incredible team. Robin Yount (I just came across his rookie card again while I was doing some cleaning this past weekend). Paul Molitor. Rollie Fingers. Pete Vuckovich. They played the Cardinals and lost in 7 games. I just about cried. They deserved that championship, I tell you.
I’ve especially hated the Cardinals ever since.
The Brewers have been decent a few times over the past decade or so. They made the NLCS in 2011 and 2018. Lost both times. But they made it further than all but one other team in the NL and two other teams in all of baseball. They’ve played some good baseball.
2018 was the year the Brewers picked up my favorite player, Christian Yelich. They made a couple of other moves that year to show that they were serious about winning. Lorenzo Cain was a great pickup. The thing is, while their offense was good, their pitching just couldn’t quite do it. They never had a lights-out group of starters.
But this year is different. Their patience with and development of the pitching staff has come to fruition. They’ve got three legit stars in Burnes, Woodruff, and Peralta; and the rest are good enough to get them some wins too. Their bullpen has been above average (trades made during the season may have weakened it a bit, but they’re still good), and their closer, Josh Hader, is a real heart attack sometimes — but still a winner.
The moves they’ve made this season have paid off in a major way. They picked up Kolten Wong — a great player whom I can now like because he’s no longer on the Cardinals — and traded away Orlando Arcia (whose enthusiasm was fun to watch). Their biggest move, though, was trading for Willy Adames. I’ve already written about him, and I tell you, it’s gotta be a tie now with Yelich as far as my favorite player goes. They also picked up Rowdy Tellez, which at first surprised me, but he’s turning out to be a gem too at first base.
And it is different. Where I always felt I could count on the Brewers losing if they were down by mid-game, this just isn’t the case any more. Just a few days ago, they came back and tied a game in the 9th against the Cardinals and then won it in the 10th with a 3-run breakout. Against the Cardinals. Sweet.
And just today, after scoring 1 in the first but going to sleep for a long stretch, they scored 6 in the last two innings to win it 7-4 against the team closest in the division, the Reds. The Brewers are putting together complete games. They’re scrapping back. They’re doing what it takes to win and they’re one of the hottest teams in the league since the All Star break. Can’t count my chickens before they hatch, but if I think back to ’82, they were down 2-0 against the Angels in the ALCS and came back to win back then. This is kind of what it feels like.
This time it does seem different, and it sure is a lot of fun…