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Battle of the nicknames
Brew Crew and Red Birds fight for the win
By John Raschig
Yet when it mattered, Detroit regained its confidence and captured the American League pennant, eventually faltering to the mighty Red Birds.
On June 1 this season, the Milwaukee Brewers, a team without a playoff appearance in 25 years, was 31-24 and led the Central Division by 6 ½ games over the injury-ridden defending champion St. Louis Cardinals and vastly overpaid Chicago C.U.B.S (Completely Useless by September).
However, since that date, the Brew Crew has gone an inexcusable 34 and 44, surrendered the division lead to their rival from the south and let the reigning champions back into the race, pulling within a half game of the Beer Makers. However, before everyone completely loses faith and bails on a team that the city supported for so long, reasons exist for justifiable optimism.
First and perhaps foremost, last year’s World Series winner, the Red Birds, entered the postseason with a very pedestrian record of 83-79 but caught fire at the right time and rumbled through the postseason, led by their superstar slugger, Albert Pujols and pitching ace, Chris Carpenter. The Brewers may win the division with a similar record and if Ben Sheets can stay healthy he can match the Cardinals combo with Prince Fielder and Chris Carpenter. Secondly, not only did the team from St. Louis stumble into the postseason, so too did the team they met in the fall classic, the Detroit Tigers. Leading the American League Central for most of the year, in the last week of the season, the Minnesota Twins became red hot and catapulted past them.
Yet when it mattered, Detroit regained its confidence and captured the American League pennant, eventually faltering to the mighty Red Birds.
Thirdly, many pundits, critics and experts disregarded the Brewers in their preseason predictions, placing them in the lower echelon of teams and maintaining that they had no chance to win the division, pointing to the World Series winners or free-spending Cubs as the favorites.
Yet when the first month of baseball was over, the Milwaukee Brewers possessed the best record and had the baseball world buzzing. This is still the same team, with the same players and the addition of talented rookies Yovani Gallardo, Manny Para and Rookie of the Year Candidate Ryan Braun that raced out to a 24-10 record by May 10.
The Milwaukee Brewers have not been this close to first place this late in the season since 1992, 15 years ago, to bail on them now makes little sense. Ace pitcher Ben Sheets seems likely to return very shortly, the Cubs cannot seem to win without Alfonso Soriano and the Cardinals cannot match the raw talent the Brewers possess.
There still remain reason for optimism but the best reason of all may be this: if the Brew Crew wins the division, Miller Park will make Madison’s State Street sound like a church. That alone should give Beer Maker fans reason to have faith.
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