What Happens Next? Who Cares? The Brewers have Won the World Series
Sports can inspire and invigorate, and they can also break your heart. In August and September of 2007, I wrote the following lyrics for “Put You Away,” a song that I didn’t record until my 2018 album, The Great Divide.
I
I’ve got to put you away for a while
Someplace I’ll one day say with a smile
Or maybe a tear
This is where I kept my heart from feeling
Cuz I
I can’t bear to feel any more
This is so much worse than before
All those little heartbreaks when you’re young
They don’t compare to what feels like a ton
Of trouble taking me down
All my passions turn to sure disaster
And I
I’ve got to put you away in a drawer
And remember how it was before
How you opened up my soul
When all I wanted
Is to crawl back into a hole
You let my spirit soar towards a future
Paved in gold
Sure, I may have dramatized things a wee bit, but it was none other than the Milwaukee Brewers who inspired these words. In the margins of the sheet of line paper where I scribbled the first draft of the song, I wrote, “Brewers collapse.” That’s how much baseball meant to me: it could lead to the saddest lyric I’ve probably ever written!
Years later, after the baseball lockout of 2022, I boycotted the game entirely for a full year and concluded that in the unlikely scenario the Brewers win the World Series one day, it wouldn’t be the same because it’s been established time and time again that Major League Baseball doesn’t give one iota about its fans. All they care about is money. I wrote, “That overwhelming jubilation will be denied me even if the Brewers do finally win it all one day, because I will no longer be watching with the passion I once felt.”
Well, maybe. I returned to baseball in 2023, I continued to attend a handful of games a year even though I live 90 miles away from my team’s ballpark. I paid for MLB.TV for a few more years before relying on radio broadcasts and highlight videos. I probably listened to parts of 120 games this year. I read every article I could about the team during the season, followed comments at the website Brew Crew Ball, and viewed countless videos. I watched every inning I could of this year’s playoffs. My stomach was in knots for many of those innings. I shouted at the TV a few times and jumped up a few times, nearly cracking my skull on my basement ceiling. I cheered with 31,000 fans at a viewing of Game 3 of the World Series, watched Game 4 in a crowded Milwaukee bar, and finally finished the run quietly at my buddy John’s house, the same guy with whom I attended Game 5 of the 1982 World Series all those years ago.
In other words, I was invested in this team this season.
But make no mistake, I wasn’t as invested as I used to be. I’m no longer fourteen when I had no responsibilities. It’s hard to be quite as passionate when greed prevented you from being able to afford a World Series ticket, and when you know that there will likely be a months-long lockout that shortens next season.
Still, it was still a thrilling ride. And now that I’ve witnessed two Packers Super Bowls, a Bucks Championship, three Badger Rose Bowls, a Badger men’s basketball trip the NCAA finals, and now the one championship that was always the most important to me – the Milwaukee Brewers winning the World Series – I think I can safely say that I don’t particularly care what happens next.
I got what I wanted. I’ll still enjoy baseball and I’ll still be a fan, but I’m a Midwestern boy at heart, and all I really needed was that one championship. If it ever happens again, it won’t come close the matching the jubilation of the first one. And if it doesn’t happen, 2026 is still in the books forever.
I have visions in the night
It seems to close I almost toast the cup in victory
Could this be really happening?
Could this be really happening?
You bet your ass. It actually happened.