It probably was an omen. Over the weekend, I found in our garage an old cassette tape. Onto the cassette was dubbed a recording I made for The Associated Press radio network after the 1982 World Series, in which the Brewers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.
This year, the Brewers lost to the Cards in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. There will be no welcome-home parade for the Brewers.
Back in ’82, I recorded the audio report — a “voicer,” as we called it in the AP — in downtown Milwaukee as the Brewers rolled along Wisconsin Avenue in antique cars. It was either one or two days after the series ended on Oct. 20.
Here’s a link to the audio, in which I do a fairly good job of disguising how teeth-chatteringly cold it was, probably in the low 40s.
I recorded this report while standing in the street, microphone in hand and tape recorder slung over my shoulder. In the 30 seconds or so leading up to the cut, I have the “natural sound” of the crowd cheering. Just before this recording, you can hear a couple of people yell “Vuke” for pitcher Pete Vukovich.
At the end of the recording, there are two sign-offs: a generic one for use by radio stations, and an “AP Network News” version for use by the network.
After I made the recording, I headed back to the AP bureau to send it over a telephone line to AP’s radio network in Washington. I unscrewed the mouthpiece of the telephone and using alligator clips attached a line from the recorder into a couple of metal prongs in the handset. That was the analog way of doing things back then.
The kicker to the story is that after work, either I picked up my brother-in-law or he picked up me. I can’t remember which – but I do remember we had WBBM from Chicago on the car radio.
As the sportscast came on, to my delight and to my brother-in-law’s surprise, the announcer reported that there were World Series parades in Milwaukee and St. Louis that day — and then they played my audio.
That’s one of the high points of my career.
The Ball Caps Blog 
I really enjoyed this post. I wish Google Chrome would have let me listen to the audio, but I loved your description of the events and smiled that it was a nice memory for you.
Thanks! Weird that you couldn’t get the audio clip. It worked fine on Chrome for me, but I’m using a freebie server and that may be why it didn’t work.
Cool.
Awesome Dan.
It’s almost hard to believe how loud and large the Milwaukee parade was despite losing game 7 or no it’s not. When the Brewers are winning, Milwaukee fans are a little more nuts than some other places. The beer and tailgate goes a long way.