By Woodrow Carroll
The Milwaukee Brewers are almost a sure bet to make the Major League Baseball (MLB) playoffs this season.
At the start of this week’s action, the Brewers were 11.0 games ahead of the opposition in the National League Central Division and for the Brewers to not finish on top of the division, Milwaukee would have to collapse, or divisional foes, the Chicago Cubs or St. Louis Cardinals for instance, would have to go on a winning streak for the ages. Neither is likely to happen!
If a franchise is around long enough there should be plenty of history attached to it. The Brewers, who came to Milwaukee by way of Seattle in 1970, have had their good moments, although a World Series championship is still lacking.
The high-water mark for the Brewers in the minds of most observers is the 1982 season. Playing in the American League at the time, the Brewers made it to the World Series for the first and only time in franchise history. (Trivia note: Milwaukee and the Houston Astros are the only MLB teams to have switched leagues. In 1998, the Brewers moved from the American League to the National League. In 2013 the Astros made the move from the National League to the American League.)
Hot starts to the World Series soon cooled for both the White Sox and Brewers.
The White Sox opened the 1959 World Series by beating the Los Angeles Dodgers, 11-0, in Game one. The Dodgers recovered to take the Series, four games to two.
The Brewers faced the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1982 World Series, two National League Central Division opponents today, in a Midwest match.
Game one of the 1982 World Series was all Milwaukee with the Brewers coming out on top, 10-0. From that point on things got a bit rougher for the Brew Crew.
Perhaps the most foolish memory of idiotic fan behavior might have been the Brewers’ fans’ storming the field at County Stadium after Game five of the 1982 World Series. The Brewers won Game five, 6-4, to take a three-games to two edge in the Series. Math has never been a strong point for most fans and certainly was not in this case. A World Series championship comes with four victories in a World Series and the Cardinals were very much alive.
Playing at home, Game six of the 1982 World Series was a 13-1 romp for St. Louis. Game seven of the 1982 Fall Classic was a 6-3 St. Louis victory to make the Cardinals the champions.
(Another trivia note: No person born and living in St. Louis starting in 1902 has ever reached his/her 25th birthday and not seen the Cardinals win a World Series championship.
The Cardinals captured their first World Series championship in 1926 and have never been subjected to long championship droughts that backers of the White Sox and Cubs, among others, have lived through. Admittedly, the Red Birds made it close for their backers by waiting until 2006 to win another championship after taking the measure of the Brewers in 1982. With a championship in 2011 in St. Louis, the target date, in past sequence, would be a 2036 World Series championship.
How bad of a season has it been for the Chicago White Sox this year? The White Sox have been officially removed from the championship betting board. If you were in the mood to play the longest of long shots by this making a wager on the White Sox to win it all, forget it! Mathematical elimination has come the way for the Pale Hose who started the week with a 30-95 won-loss record and 240 percentage. The Cubs were 61-64 through Monday this week, .488 percentage and in third place in the National League Central.