Brewers and Mariners: A Tale of Two Championship Losers

With the Seattle Mariners losing last night in heart-breaking fashion, fans are denied the coveted Brewers-Mariners battle between two teams who’ve never won a World Series. That perfect pairing will have to wait. I was fourteen when the Brewers last made the World Series, and I’m prepared to keep waiting. I’m just running out of time!

The ALCS and NLCS couldn’t have been more different: the former was a 7-game, back and forth affair between two teams playing at a high level, with alternating stellar pitching and offensive punch; the NLCS was a 4-game snoozefest, with the Brewers breaking records for the worst batting average and OPS in playoff history for a series of more than 3 games. They scored a whopping four runs in four games. Only game 4 provided fans with an indelible memory, as the world’s greatest player had arguably the greatest playoff game in history.

I didn’t see it.

I was traveling in New York, and when I peaked at my phone and saw that the Crew was already down 4-0, I decided to go to bed, prepared to wake up to the realization that Milwaukee’s season was over.

The next day my mom and I drove two and a half hours to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, one of my favorite places on the planet. When I handed the attendant my tickets, he noticed the Brewers hat on my head and commented, “Man, how about Ohtani?” I sheepishly admitted I hadn’t watched the game. “Three home runs! And 6 innings pitched with 10 strikeouts.”

Wow!

I’m glad I missed it. I’m reminded of a Brewers-Twins matchup I attended in Minneapolis in 1994, when Twins pitcher Scott Erickson cruised through 8 2/3rds innings of no-hit ball. I found myself surrounded by Brewers fans who were actually cheering for the guy to finish the job. Hell no! Greg Vaughn was at the plate and I was praying – PRAYING – for a home run to not only ruin the no-hitter, but to kill the shutout and complete game as well. I didn’t get my wish, and I was pissed. I don’t mind watching history, as long as it’s not against my team.

Anyhow, all of this begs the question: is it better to lose a hard-fought battle in heartbreaking fashion like Seattle, or to lose in such an anemic fashion like Milwaukee? I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’ve been to two deciding playoff games in which the Brewers lost. It wasn’t fun, but at least the series provided moments of joy. This year’s NLCS against the Dodgers provided nothing for Brewers fans to hang their hats on. It wasn’t any fun. To go from winning a deciding game against the Cubs on Saturday to being eliminated by the following Friday….that’s a different sort of heartbreak.

Seattle fans, the three-run home run in the 7th was a brutal way to lose. Brutal. But try to embrace the season, the amazing 15-inning victory to clinch the ALDS, and the terrific battle against the Blue Jays. You had a hell of run.

So did the Brewers, until they didn’t.

I guess any way you lose, you end up in the same place.

Sports Hats Invite Conversation

Spontaneous conversations seem to be a lost art. It’s so easy to avoid eye contact and conversation by peering at the latest headlines on your phone, that chance encounters are less likely than they were a few decades ago. Unfortunately, this lack of small talk can feed on itself until people lose the skill altogether. Each morning, I pass by dog-walkers who not only don’t shoot the breeze with me – a fellow dog-walker – but can’t even garner the energy to say hello, as if they’ve lost the ability to utter the two-word syllable. More likely, they’ve lost all confidence to interact with strangers. Or maybe they’re just douchebags. Hard to tell.

One way to occasionally overcome this trend while traveling is by wearing a sport hat. On a recent trip to the Los Angeles area, I had two delightful conversations with complete strangers, all because of the hat I was wearing. Usually, it’s the Green Bay Packers hat that attracts the most attention, but on this trip I donned the cap of my first-place Milwaukee Brewers. Neither of my conversations came from Brewers fans, but the recognition was enough to start them chatting.

My wife, daughter and I were hanging out at a wine bar in Santa Barbara (it sounds kind of bougie, I know), and one of the guys at a table next to us notice my hat: “That is the greatest sports logo ever, the Milwaukee Brewers.” He proceeded to point out to his colleague that the Brewers emblem is no ordinary baseball glove, but a glove comprised of the letters M and B for the name of the sports team. It is a great sports logo! But it was cool for someone else to notice. For the next few minutes, we talked about my Brewers and his Dodgers, and how the playoffs have watered down the importance of the regular season, etc. Good stuff!

A day later my daughter and I were on the shuttle bus taking us from the Sara Bareilles concert at the Hollywood Bowl back to the Zoo. There were only two seats left, separated by five or six rows, so we each took one, but soon after another group of people came onto the bus for standing room only. I gave up my seat for the first woman who walked on (who said chivalry is dead?) and after saying thank you, she noticed my hat and said, “I was born in St. Louis. Don’t hate me.”  Well, it’s true that the Cardinals have been a thorn in the Brewers’ side since the 1982 World Series, and after she introduced herself as “Ann from Ann Arbor” (she having attended the University of Michigan), we chatted for a bit about baseball before moving on to other things. Ann was a talker, and while it’s true that I wouldn’t have wanted to spend an entire day with her, for a 20-minute bus ride she was a pure delight. She told me about her job in video work, her apartment near USC, her Christmas caroling adventures, and about writing a musical and playing the French horn. When we got off the bus she wanted to meet my daughter and ended up giving both of us a hug.

Yeah, I know. For a lot of people these types of stories only solidify why they never want to leave their homes. Like ever. Conversations with strangers? Eww!

But I’m telling you, for me it was a nice cap to an already terrific day.

You want to spontaneously talk with strangers? Wear a hat. If not, wear the most anonymous clothing you can find.

MEMORY AND MUSIC TIME TRAVEL

If you’re human you undoubtedly know about the fallibility of memory, how even our most-assured recollections can be put into question or proven entirely false upon further examination.  It’s reassuring then to discover that at least in some cases, my first-hand memory is spot on and confirmable. For someone who loves music and has a penchant for nostalgia (guilty as charged) the miracle of technology allows me to listen back to concerts I attended long ago. And it turns out that at least some of my memory is intact.

I recall that on October 9, 1982, during Rush’s opening song “Spirit of Radio,” vocalist Geddy Lee sang “One likes to believe in the freedom of baseball,” substituting for the word ”music” in honor of the Milwaukee Brewers victory over the Angels in game four of the ALCS earlier that afternoon. I remember it. And now I can validate it, because the entire concert is available on YouTube. When the crowd screams, my fourteen-year-old self is there, unaware that forty years later he’ll be able to access his own applause. Remarkable.

Once I discovered this defining show from my youth, I turned to other concerts from long ago, and it turns out that there are at least seven shows that I attended from 1982-1986 available for streaming. (note: I find that YouTube regularly scrubs live recordings from its vault, and the Genesis concert link is already defunct. Bummer! A new Google search can often lead to an operational link):

Rush, October 9, 1982 (https://youtu.be/xgIhhNabk10)
Genesis, November 10, 1983 (link no longer working)
Yes, March 10, 1984 (https://archive.org/details/Yes_90125_1984-03-10-AnotherTownAndOneMoreShow-Milwaukee)
Bruce Springsteen, July 12, 1984 (https://www.guitars101.com/threads/bruce-springsteen-alpine-valley-music-theater-east-troy-wi-july-12-1984.678215/)
Elton John, September 9, 1984 (https://youtu.be/G51mCqcd_r0)
Tom Petty, June 23, 1985 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNviPMup2wA)
Rush, March 24, 1986 (https://youtu.be/M4kyxrp4N1E)

Before YouTube deleted the recording, I was able to confirm that during the Genesis show in 1983, Mike Rutherford had to sit out a good chunk of the song “That’s All” because of technical difficulties, and that the singer Phil Collins encouraged the audience to plug their ears and repeat the phrase, “Masturbation will not make me deaf.”

For the Yes concert in 1984, I distinctly recall Tony Rabin accidentally adding harmony vocals to a verse of the song “Hearts” (the “Many moons cascade one river…” section) quickly dropping out when realizing his mistake, and he and bassist Chris Squire cracking up as a result. I’m listening to the concert now, and…there it is! The blunder!

The guy who posted the Elton John concert calls it, “Elton John, Stoned in Alpine Valley” and includes this description: “Although there are some contenders for this, I still consider this Elton’s most drug-fueled show.” And now I can listen to his drug-fueled performance as if Elton’s sobriety is still a decade on the horizon. (It’s also fun to think that this was supposed to be his “final American tour.” The dude’s most recent farewell tour has been going on for over four years!)

I also appreciate that my memory of setlists is sometimes more accurate than what I can find on websites that archive such things. For Supertramp’s 1983 concert from Alpine Valley, Wisconsin, I reviewed the entry on setlist.fm and immediately knew it wasn’t correct because I remembered the band performing “Waiting So Long” and “Child of Vision.” Sure enough, I just checked the notes I wrote after the show, and both of these tunes were played. Unfortunately, I can’t find any recordings on-line of the Wisconsin show or any other shows with a similar setlist. The Internet has its limitations.

But not as many limitations as memory itself. Hell, I attended a Jimmy Buffett concert with my future wife and brother-in-law in 1993, and until one of them mentioned it to me a few years ago I had no recollection of even having been there! Worse, I’ll have a discussion with a friend today and forget the contents by the day’s end. A few weeks ago I was trying to recall the name of the actress “Carey Mulligan” and it eluded me. This morning I spoke to my mom, a nurse of over four decades, and she had trouble accessing the word “autoimmune.”

I’m looking forward to the day when physicians are able to employ a defrag of our internal hard drives, allowing us to access memories accurately and quickly like Jeopardy champions. But until then, most of us will have to muddle on through life knowing that while a portion of our recollections have some truth to them, many fall in a gray area somewhere between truth and fiction.

How gray?

Say it with me Fletch fans.

Charcoal.