The Brewers Make the World Series
When you’re fourteen, the future seems limitless, both in time and possibility. After my buddy John and I watched the Brewers take a three-games-to-two lead over the Cardinals in Game 5 of the 1982 World Series, we were certain that we’d be celebrating a championship in a few days’ time. It was not to be. But at a school assembly later that year, Bud Selig himself assured us that the Brewers would return better than ever the following season.
Forty-four years and many life lessons later, I know that the future isn’t limitless and life rarely unfolds as imagined, in baseball or otherwise. There will be gut-punches, heartbreaks and disappointments along the way. You’ll learn to manage, adapt, reframe things and make the best of it. Every so often, usually with a sad song playing on the stereo and a bourbon in hand, you’ll look back on your youth, when everything seemed possible. When that wrong turn hadn’t yet been taken. When you hadn’t yet failed to live up to your potential. And when your baseball team whose radio broadcasts captivated you from a young age hadn’t yet fallen short in heart-breaking fashion, again and again.
I think of all the games I took my kids to. Those hapless teams of the early 2000s, when my daughters fell in love with Brady Clark, Ben Sheets, Scott Podsednik, Geoff Jenkins and Bill Hall. So many losses. So many trips up to Milwaukee without the luxury of a fun post-victory broadcast to listen to. And then there are the playoff losses we attended: Game 2 of the 2011 NLCS, followed by two in 2018 – Game 4 in Los Angeles with my daughter and Game 7 in Milwaukee with my son – and finally a 2025 loss in Milwaukee against those same Dodgers.
Yes, I loved baseball as a game and the Brewers as a team, but dang, it had been a rough ride. Sports can be so exhilarating, so inspiring and fun, but often they merely echo the hard life lessons of having to endure hardship and disappointment. And honestly, who needs that reminder? Isn’t life hard enough?
But then last night, when the Brewers completed their sweep of the Dodgers, all of those disappointments were excised. Even some of the personal ones.
The future isn’t limitless, but man, it sure has potential.