Rush, The Brewers, and Coming Full Circle

I first saw Rush on October 9, 1982, the day the Milwaukee Brewers tied the ALCS against the Angels. Singer/bassist Geddy Lee and drummer Neil Peart both came out sporting Brewers garb, and Geddy modified the lyrics to the opening song, “The Spirit of Radio,” to include the line, “One likes to believe in the freedom of baseball.” As an impressionable boy of fourteen enjoying the show from sensational floor seats at MECCA Arena, watching a great band with my older brother, this was one of those electrifying moments that’s stayed with me forever. What’s crazy is that this moment can now be streamed on YouTube, and I’ve done so at least a half a dozen times just to relive the thrill. The Brewers went on to beat the Angels the next day, earning their first World Series berth, which ended in heartbreaking fashion against the Cardinals.

Last Friday, I watched Rush perform for my eleventh and final time (really…this is my last one!), this time in Cincinnati with my son, daughter and son-in-law, and in a strange bit of kismet, just as Rush were beginning their show, the Milwaukee Brewers were starting their first inning of World Series baseball since 1982. Yes, my allegiances were torn, but I was determined to be present for what was in front of me: witnessing one of my favorite bands with my family well-represented. It was my daughter who couldn’t stop checking the score, and when she informed me early on that the Brewers had taken a 2-0 lead, it looked like this was going to be one of those perfect evenings.

By the time Rush completed their show, game one of the World Series was nearly over, with the Brewers clinging to a 3-1 lead. We four exited the arena and quickly made our way to a nearby bar with TVs hanging outdoors along the sidewalk, and from this vantage point we were able to witness the thrilling, stressful conclusion to the game, with the Brewers winning 3 – 2. After high fives and hugs, it came to me: I said to my kids: “That was the first Brewers World Series victory since I attended game 5 in 1982 with my buddy John.”

In a few days, I’ll once again watch a World Series game with my buddy John, this time from a bar rather than the last row of the left field bleachers of County Stadium.

For life to circle back this way: the teenager now a post-middle-aged husband and father of three; the power trio in its prime now a duo with hired hands; the young, electric future hall-of-famers Yount and Molitor now throwing out the first pitch for the new and improved young, electric Brewers, well…dang. I don’t think I could dream up a script as good as this one.

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.

Where would you Time Travel?

When it comes to thought-provoking discussion topics, one of the most intriguing has got to be: “If you could go back in time, where would you go?”  I asked a friend of mine this question recently and he said, “I’ve never thought about it.”  I find this mind-boggling, as I’ve spent days of my life contemplating just the rules of such an endeavor, never mind the actual answer to the question.  There are so many variables to consider:

• How long can I travel back in time?  An hour?  A day?  A year?

• Do I get to choose when to come back, or is the duration predetermined?

• Can I stay if I choose to?

• Am I going merely as an observer, or do I get to interact with my environment?

• Will my actions change history?

• If I do interact with my environment, will I know the language of the people I meet?  Will I arrive with the proper clothing and currency?  Will I have access to basic toiletries and lodging?

• Can I go back as myself and relive an event from my own life?  If so, do I go with my 53-year-old brain and understanding of the world, or do I go back to the person I was at that time?

• Once I arrive, am I bound to the travel restrictions of that time?  For instance, can I visit multiple places with the snap of a finger, or would I have to walk or ride in a bus, boat or carriage?

• Can I die, be harmed or put in prison while I’m away?

It can get complicated quickly, and each answer to the above questions will radically change the central answer to the central question.

When I asked a few of my Christian friends, they didn’t need to think twice: witness Jesus’s resurrection.  Fair enough.  Another friend of mine thought that seeing her grandparents as young adults would make for a good trip.  I like that one a lot.  Some of my music-centric friends thought about attending one of the seminal concerts by their favorite bands.  One friend thought about witnessing the JFK assassination and paying particular attention to the grassy knoll to see if there’s any truth to the conspiracy theories.

For me, I’ll make the following assumptions:  I will not interact with my environment in a meaningful way, but I can make small talk, order food at a restaurant, etc..  I can observe people, places and events, I can eat food, and I can be visible if I choose to be or an invisible observer when appropriate.  I am not subject to injury, death or imprisonment.  I can travel via the methods appropriate for the time period.  I can sleep in some other dimension, as opposed to living along in a dingy motel somewhere.  Money is no object.  I can not change history.  I can stay for up to a month.

Given these assumptions, I would consider time-traveling to Milwaukee on September 23, 1957 and staying for at least three weeks.  I have the following in mind:

I’ll first attend County Stadium to witness the Milwaukee Braves game on Monday night, September 23, and watch Hank Aaron hit a game-winning, league-clinching, two-run homer in the bottom of the 11th inning and celebrate with over 40,000 other fans in attendance.  A few weeks later, I will attend games 4 and 5 of the World Series and watch the Braves beat the Yankees, and I’ll stick around in Milwaukee to watch/listen/cheer/celebrate with my fellow fans on October 9th and 10th while the Braves beat the Yankees in the Bronx.  I could try to travel to New York to see the games, but I think it might actually be more fun in Milwaukee.

Since there’s a lot of time to kill in between these two events, I’ve got some ideas. I’d like to take a bus to Memphis, Tennessee, and on September 27th see The Biggest Show of Stars, including Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, The Drifters, The Everly Brothers, Frankie Lymon and Paul Anka.  Not too shabby.  And two days earlier, on September 25th, I can see Elvis Presley at the Eagle’s Nest, also in Memphis!  Even better, the weather in Memphis that week looks to be in the mid-70s to the low-80s, so I’d try to take a boat tour, eat some good southern food and get a flavor for the area.

If possible, I’d then like to quickly travel up to Green Bay for their 21-17 victory over the Bears at the inaugural game at New City Stadium (now Lambeau Field).  I’ll be there with 31,000 other fans, and future president Richard M. Nixon (and current - at the time - Vice President) will dedicate the stadium at half-time.

During the following week I’ll go back to Milwaukee and visit both sets of my grandparents.  I knew my maternal grandparents, Elmer and Louise, quite well as a young adult, but I’d love to see them again, hear them laugh, watch them cook a meal, play cards, sing in the choir, etc.  I’d even take a few bus rides with my grandfather at the helm as a city driver.  What a hoot that would be.  And then I can go just a short drive away to my paternal grandparents, Edwin and Mildred, who I didn’t know nearly as well in my lifetime, and get a fuller picture of who they were.

I would also kick around the land where I grew up in Menominee Falls and Brookfield.  None of the homes I lived in will be there yet, but I’d still like to see how things looked prior subdivisions being developed.

During my downtime, I’ll watch current movies in theaters.  It’s hard to know exactly what films will be played during this three-week period, but they might include Jailhouse Rock, Sweet Smell of Success and A Face in the Crowd.  Maybe a few older films will be playing around town as well. And I’m sure there will be local concerts worth seeing. I’d also like to attend a Reform Judaism service somewhere in Milwaukee or northern suburbs and see what the services consisted of back then, and I’d like to visit Capitol Drive Lutheran Church where I’ll attend Sunday School a few decades later.

That sounds like a pretty good three-week time-travel vacation.  If the parameters were to change, so would my answer.  What if I can only go back for one hour?  What if I can change history?  What if I can snap my fingers and change locations?  What if I can interact with my environment with absolutely no worry about changing history? 

Oh, the possibilities are endless.  Sorta like this blog entry!

Where and when would you like to go?

A Devil's Baseball Bargain

I’ve proposed the following scenario to a few Milwaukee Brewers fans, but you could just as easily apply it to fans of the Seattle Mariners or Texas Rangers, the Jacksonville Jaguars, Denver Nuggets or Buffalo Sabres, or any other sports team without a championship. 

A person or entity of some kind approaches you, and – knowing your lifetime loyalty to the Milwaukee Brewers (or some other ill-fated sports team) – says, “I can guarantee that the Brewers will win a World Series sometime in the next five years, but here’s the deal: your team will spend the subsequent twenty years in last place.”

You don’t know how or why, but you know this person is telling the truth.  Do you take the bargain?

I’ve offered this question to a couple of friends of mine and have been dumbfounded that each of them quickly and unequivocally said no; they’d rather have a fun, competitive team for many years than to hit the pinnacle for one year and spend two decades in the cellar.

Me?  I would take the deal in a heartbeat.

I wouldn’t have when I was fourteen years-old and the Brewers had just lost the World Series in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals.  After all, they’d surely be back a year later to avenge their disappointing loss, right?  Right???

Nearly forty years later, I realize just how fleeting successes are, and how you can root for a team – even good teams – and never make it to the finish line.  Think the Utah Jazz, the Tampa Rays or the Buffalo Bills.  Or how about the Atlanta Falcons, who let the Super Bowl slip away when it was in the bag?  Brutal stuff.  Tell me a Falcon fan wouldn’t change the outcome of that game for twenty years in the doldrums.

The Packers have won two more Super Bowls than I ever expected them to win when I was following them through the awful 70s and 80s.  But now?  It’s all icing, baby.  They’ve done it.  Twice in my lifetime!  If they spend the next decade in last place, hey, that’s okay.

The Milwaukee Bucks just won their first championship since I was three years old.  I was thrilled.  I traveled up to Milwaukee and hung out with my sister and brother-in-law, walked amongst Bucks fans of all genders, races and sizes, and I loved it.  But I couldn’t express unadulterated jubilation, because I didn’t earn it.  I don’t think much of pro basketball as a sport, and while I was very happy for the city of Milwaukee, the fans who’ve slogged through season after hapless season and the players who seem genuinely grateful for having won a championship in a small-market city, I couldn’t revel in the victory as much as the next guy.  After all, the Bucks game I attended earlier this year was my first NBA game in twenty years.

But I’ve earned my heartache with the Milwaukee Brewers, and I will have earned the euphoria should they ever manage to win a World Series.  They’ve come close to getting there – in 2011 and 2018 – and those were fun rides to be sure, but they were not the finish line.  I want what true Bucks fans got last week.  I want it all.  I want to be in the stands when the Brewers complete a World Series victory.

I’d be willing to spend a lot of awful seasons for that Golden Moment.  Hell, I’ve lived through enough awful seasons without that golden moment.  What’s a few more?

Baseball Begins

Just prior to the beginning of the pandemic-shortened MLB season, I happened to start watching the baseball-themed comedy series Brockmire, and was taken with this quote from the third episode:

“So let’s not make baseball out to be any more important than it really is.  It’s just a diversion that keeps us from pondering our own personal hells.”

I love this, and while I’d never admit that I when I watch a ballgame I’m avoiding my own personal demons, I must confess that I’ve missed the diversion of baseball.  I’ve missed having that little no-think something to look forward to at the end of the day, or – lately - in the middle of a frightfully unscheduled weekend.  A little light that says, “Hey, even if you’ve got nothing else going on, baseball starts at 1:20,” as it did yesterday. 

I grabbed a Pabst from the refrigerator (because it’s $7.99 for a 12-pack and it’s good on a hot summer’s day, that’s why), lay down on the couch, petted my pooch, and listened to Bob Uecker call the game for his fiftieth-straight season.  Perfect. The diversion and it’s accompanying mid-day nap were lovely pastimes indeed right until Peralta gave up four runs in fourth and basically ensured that the Cubs would take two of three from the Brewers to start the season.  At that moment it was baseball frustration as usual.  I turned the TV off and went back to work.

Ah, but there’s another game tonight, another diversion, another glimmer of hope.  And that’s one of the beauties of baseball.

And while I don’t exactly hold out a lot of hope for the Brewers during this season like no other, or for the baseball season in general in light of the horrific number of COVID-19 cases reported each day, I can imagine the following scenario:  after a lifetime of making a silent prayer (okay, sometimes not so silent) to let my Brewers win a World Series title (just one – I’m not being greedy), I can imagine the All-Powerful Creator up in the sky saying, “You want a World Series Title; I’ll give you one,” and THIS will be the year I’m granted my request.  This asterisk-marred joke of a season.  THIS will be the year the Milwaukee Brewers win a championship.  Craig Counsell and his crew will come home to Milwaukee for a parade down Wisconsin Avenue on a chilly November afternoon, and fans will come out in droves to celebrate the stunning achievement of the city’s first title since the erstwhile Braves in 1957, and I will be one of those delusional fans. But I and all of my cheesehead brethren will know…we’ll know that none of it counts.  Nothing counts in what is basically a 60-game exhibition.  And God will say, “Hey, what do you want?  I gave you a World Series.”

Because never once in all my years of praying did I specify, “Please God, let the Brewers win a World Series in my lifetime, but only if it’s a legitimate 162-game regular season.”

Dummy me: I forgot to include the proviso.