A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
Well, I’m not surprised in the least that Prince Fielder didn’t return to the Brewers, and quite frankly I don’t think any Brewer fan is surprised.
Yet, although I knew it was coming and have had a long time to prepare for it, a part of me is still very sad that it’s official that Prince won’t being wearing a Milwaukee uniform in 2012.
Dear Ryan Braun,
Somewhere, Robin Yount weeps.
You can’t even begin to imagine how much I hope the allegations against you are untrue. I don’t want to believe that you used performance-enhancing drugs, but part of me just knows that it’s true.
Congratulations Major League Baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers, and Ryan Braun – you all now get to sport a shiny, new black eye.
Or maybe by tomorrow it will be ESPN needing to make a major apology/retraction, or not…
The Milwaukee Brewers fell to the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS, bringing an end to easily one of the greatest seasons in franchise history. The Brewers have never won a World Series, and 2011 was looking like it would be the franchise’s best chance to win it all since 1982.
Sadly for Brewers fans, the team’s hitting and starting pitching was nowhere to be found in the NLCS, and now we have to sit back and watch the hated Cardinals play in the World Series knowing that it could have just as easily been us going toe-to-toe with the Texas Rangers.
There is still potentially a lot of baseball remaining in the National League Championship Series, and after three games obviously someone was going to have a two games to one lead. So it remains too early to panic and call the election.
I made that mistake back in 1982 when the St. Louis Cardinals won Game 3 of the World Series and had bolted to an early lead in Game 4. The Milwaukee Brewers came back to win that game and eventually had a 3-2 series lead before losing the Fall Classic in seven games.
But the first three games, as well as the National League Division Series before that, have provided some telling signs. After being a decent, but not a playoff-caliber team most the season, the Cardinals now seem to have that 2006 feel.
That World Championship feel.
To coin a phrase – could it possibly be Written In the Stars???
Right now I will give you several reasons I believe the Cards will be able to ultimately close the deal on Milwaukee.
It was another intriguing weekend in sports, especially here in The Midwest where baseball is currently king and a changing of the guard is underway in the Big Ten. Here are 8 things we learned this weekend.
Behold the power of cheese.
Things have been pretty good in Wisconsin in 2011. Outside of all that political crap, the sports scene has been unreal. From the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, to the Packers’ run through the playoffs and their Super Bowl XLV win, and even Marquette and Wisconsin making it to the Sweet Sixteen, it has been a dream season for everyone in America’s Dairyland.
And then there are the Brewers.
Until early Friday evening, there had been two sporting events that I had personally attended in my life which I put above all others. One was a tense game on an early fall afternoon on the final weekend of the strike-shortened 1981 baseball season, when the Milwaukee Brewers downed the Detroit Tigers to earn the franchise’s first ever playoff berth.
The other came nearly eight years ago when the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks went to sudden death overtime in the first round of the NFL playoffs. The game ended with Al Harris’s ‘Divine Interception’, with Harris crossing the end zone literally right in front of me.
The Milwaukee Brewers walk-off win against the Arizona Diamondbacks last night to move on to the National League Championship Series may have them both topped.
Despite having written about it multiple times, including here and here, and despite the fact that they have been playing with a wide NL Central lead for most of August and September, it is still a little surreal to me that the Milwaukee Brewers (96-66) are in the playoffs.
And with all of the possible scenarios that could have possibly shaken out this week, I’m very happy with the ways things turned out for the Brew Crew. Home field advantage and no Phillies in the first round? Fine by me.
Here is a preview of the NLDS matchup between Milwaukee and Arizona.
Can you smell that? It’s October baseball. And it’s not far off. Just a few more series to go here in September before another thrilling edition of MLB playoff baseball begins.
And one team that will certainly be around come October is the Milwaukee Brewers, which is why lifelong Brewers fan and 620 WTMJ personality Trenni Kusnierek is our guest on the latest edition of the MLB Trivia Challenge Podcast sponsored by the M&A advisors and consultants at Generational Equity, where they are experts in guiding middle-market business owners along the process of selling a business.
Jerod and Trenni take a stab at one of Ari’s more challenging sextet of questions, and then they turn their attention to Trenni’s beloved Brew Crew.
The mercurial Nyjer Morgan has fast become Major League Baseball’s answer to Dennis Rodman, Ron Artest, or Chad Ochocinco.
As it pertains to the Milwaukee Brewers over the next several weeks, this could prove to be a good or a bad thing.
Coming off a sweep of the Houston AAAstros (see what I did there?), the Milwaukee Brewers have won four straight and 11 of 12, with the lone loss coming at the end of a classic against the St. Louis Cardinals in extra innings. In that stretch, Milwaukee has beaten Houston six times, the Chicago Cubs three times, and the Cardinals twice.
It’s no surprise that the Brewers have been able to beat up on the bottom feeders of the National League. What surprised me was the text I received from my mother, the most bandwagon of fans I know, after the game Sunday afternoon.
“On to St. Louis! How is Weeks doing? Can we beat the Cards on the road?”
I guess the United States has officially started caring about soccer, so much so that some thought that anger over Sunday’s Women’s World Cup Final result somehow managed to spill into the middle of a Milwaukee Brewers v. Colorado Rockies game after an incident occurred during the bottom of the seventh inning involving usually mild-mannered Brewers reliever Takashi Saito.
Editor’s note: Amanda Lawson is a lifelong Green Bay Packers fan who is getting into baseball for the first time this year. After much deliberation and counsel, Amanda settled on the Minnesota Twins as her team. With “Beginning Baseball” Amanda is documenting her first season of baseball fandom.
It doesn’t matter what sport you are talking about, games against your team’s biggest rival are the ones that get you pumped up the most. Whether the team is awesome that particular season or not, rival games bring out the best trash talk and have a make-or-break atmosphere that keep you coming back for more.
As a new baseball fan, I was excited to find out who the Twins biggest rival was. I never really asked who the Twins’ greatest rival was, but just learned from the smack talk and defensive comments I got from certain fans.
Until one day there was a comment on Twitter that made me think twice about my initial perception.
