Where do we start? Like what scant space do you choose to squeeze into, if at the wrong sports bar, to get your Miller Lite or Leinies. Like the guy with the Brewer shirt and the cool closer-style-eyeglasses the day AFTER, who I told missed out on it by yes a day, and a pair of dollars if you were to check out something like the $6 special — or maybe it was for the Packers — of Leinenkugel’s Summer Shanty or better yet, Legacy Ale.
Across the way were a odd-ball trio talking about the World Series going back to Game One, a guy who looked Middle Eastern flanked by a white guy and an Asian chick. Baseball and the Brewers in particular, bring the world together. Milwaukee had been known to it moreso for hosting political conventions and the like. Imagine that …
Green Bay still had gotten first dibs in merchandise, brazen over the Brew Crew, with a statewide bank offering 15 percent off at the Packer pro shop and 10 percent on game day food and drink concessions. You could have used it on Thursday night when they made a strong primetime bid to improve their already over-500 record. A grocer who says they are a team sponsor, also, has been giving away tickets for two in their MVP deck, as well as having a lengthy banner running along at Lambeau. But the Brewers are now ready for primetime, as they say.
Contrarius got the MVP as catcher before the scant remaining Florida crowd, the first such man who makes his living behind the plate as well as at it, in 11 years of the past, and only a handful of years total, of the World Series. And then they brought on Yelich, with his eight years here, and he heaped praise on Uecker, as did others.
I heard it said on Brewer radio three times over that there was a particular view on pitching that had no credibility: To allow their ace to keep going at it before his usual start with a three game to none lead, with the Brew Crew as is and its amazing and unusually deep pitching staff, had no merit. When he did take the mound for Game Four, to keep up his success that left him with an ERA below one for The Series or The Postseason, or both, it was Miz-ery-ski for the Rays, his sharp slider piercing their fins, though they are thick. Can’t spell it, however, and it could be named by other such long in the tooth M for mouth words you might see in a sports bar district — Maserati, Mitsubishi, macaroni, martini.
Anyway, the in-the-regular-season 103 wins for what could have been a sub-500 team, some still noted Wednesday night, carried on to an even more raucous celebration locally at the end of this end game. The baseball establishment would finally show Milwaukee some much-due respect, after some questionable calls on tags and follow-through-swings at the plate against them early on. And gotta say, there were times when it was the Rays and their several blunders who did not seem like a World Series-caliber team. (But again, the day after, and not ten years following, as time will bring about as new what was old, again: When giving a post-victory rehash, the wording stats-and-such bar below the TV show talking heads, still had the Rays logo ahead of the Brewers signature glove, and the same trademark treatment even with a team The Crew had beaten earlier in the postseason.)
There throughout had been a bit lesser crowds locally than you’d expect, but it was variable, with only a handful left at Dick’s at end of Game Five. Bartender Sara, closing her shift, gave me a fist bump but others when it was win time gave me unusually less apt than usual high fives. The bartender said the previous night’s 12-inning affair left people spent, two different ways, so not so many were out that followup evening. But the one man, directly in front of the front bartender man, was unaware that this was the first Brewer championship ever, which gave me a chance to launch in with my college 1982 experience, and how frustrating it was to see St. Louis get by with slapping so many choppers and managing, on Astro Turf, to run it out in a rush to first base, then win in seven. (The same guy was gutsy enough to erroneously swear that he saw in a near empty upstairs Twins atrium there were four title trophies. Two was the right number, going back as far as the Brewers first gasp. But that, oh baseball establishment, is still three titles for small market.)
I got into a conversation with the guy who sat down next to me, who said he was dumped here at Dick’s for the first time in three years, and knew little of decades of baseball. His friends could have told him more about old Astro Turf ball, and how you can win various ways. Homer Hankie aside.
But in my neck of the northwoods, its the Twins, mostly, and how when shopping at a grocer ten miles into the Gopher State on the day before the end for Tampa, I saw a lot of deep blue sweatshirts — some green too — and one had a baseball team’s writing on it, though covered partially by a hoodie. (I looked closer, and I think it said St. Paul Saints.) But over by the bathrooms, two doors that said Crew only. Omen?
This was maybe not an omen, but still telling: My uncle had, flip-flop and traveling like the teams had done, been with his family down at Disney during the times the games were being played. Reversal of fortune? Tempted to ditch the theme park and go to the ballpark?
What will it be like in the recently coming postseason in the Milwaukee area, or working at The Probst sports bar, like my niece? There were no early reports from the city of violence or other mayhem, although the Milwaukee public schools closed for the day on Friday citing reasons involving “operations and safety.” Pity that token Florida kid in the classroom front row!