My friend Tim just called for our annual “wait ’til next year” call after baseball season ends in Cleveland. The Tampa Bay Rays took care of that by defeating the Guardians in the American League Championship Series.
While I congratulate the Rays, clearly the best team in the American League, I will be rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series.
To anyone who knows me or reads this blog, that’s not a surprise. To recap briefly, I lived in Milwaukee in the late 70s while attending graduate school in journalism at Marquette University and worked in the Milwaukee bureau of The Associated Press from 1981 to 1983.
I lived in the Bay View section of Milwaukee during those latter years, and it was there that I watched all seven games of the 1982 World Series. I covered the Brewers parade on Wisconsin Avenue after the series and filed a report for the AP Radio Network. (Alas, the recording has gone the way of Harvey Kuenn to the great diamond in the sky.)
Long gone from the Brew City, I still root for the Brewers and have always held out hope that they’d make it back to the series.
After the Brewers advanced and before the ALCS ended, I saw scores of posts from baseball fans hoping for a “Bob Uecker” series between Milwaukee and Cleveland. Ueck, who died early this year, was the radio voice of the Brewers for most of the franchise’s history. He was also fictional Cleveland announcer Harry Doyle in the movie “Major League.”
While it would have been fun to see that Cleveland-Milwaukee matchup, I’m relieved it didn’t happen. I’d hate have to choose between the team I grew up with against the team I followed when my adult life and career took off.
I had laid in city-brewed supplies for each team: Pabst Blue Ribbon for Milwaukee and Great Lakes Oktoberfest for Cleveland. I’m going to polish off the Great Lakes cans by Thursday night and have the PBR at the ready for World Series Game 1 on Friday night.
For luck, I’ll also set out my old Brewers replica batting helmet that I got at a game at Milwaukee County Stadium 40-plus years ago.
Go, Brewers! 🧢
