The Soapbox
Rockville, MD
¨ 19 February 2004 ¨ wshingleton@hotmail.comBack to Baseball
Baseball fans, I know most of you have been distracted this offseason by the moves by the Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, and others. But for those Red Sox and Cubs fans who think they are the most cursed teams in baseball, I want to point out the following:
Your teams were just two innings away from the World Series last year. In Milwaukee, we've been waiting to go back to the playoffs since the first Reagan Administration. We haven't even been above .500 at the end of a season since 1993.
Your teams are two of the best run in baseball, with a commitment to at least try to win. We cut our payroll by a quarter in the offseason.
Your teams are littered with stars like Pedro Martinez, Kerry Wood, Curt Schilling, Sammy Sosa, Nomar Garciaparra, Greg Maddux. We have Bob Uecker, and as the radio announcer he's hard to watch at games. We also race lunch meat to keep the crowd awake at home games.
You have Red Sox Nation. We are lucky if we constitute Brewer Village.
In short, every season, your teams give you hope, just to dash it at the end of the year. The Brewers don't bother to provide even hope.
But as of 21 February 2004, that doesn't matter. Because if your team has a payroll of $35 million or $190 million, right now everybody is 0-0 and tied for first. Except for the Brewers, who are tied for last.
It's been a wild offseason for the Brewers.
For those not steeped in Brewer lore, the worst mistake in the history of the franchise was in 1983 when it traded Gorman Thomas, who set the club record for home runs in a season with 45, to the Cleveland Indians for prospect Rick Manning. Thomas was a fan favorite, known for tailgating with the fans in the parking lot before games (kind of a 1980s David Wells type, but in a city that appreciated such things). He played hurt, he played hard, he had a beer gut. He was a Milwaukee kind of guy. And even though he didn't have much of a career after the trade, Rick Manning was an absolute disaster, and true Brewer fans never forgave then-owner Bud Selig for such an act of betrayal.
This offseason, the Brewers traded Richie Sexson, who had tied Thomas' team record for home runs in both 2003 and 2001 - and played all 162 games last year. This isn't much of an accomplishment for most first basemen, but then again, most first basemen don't have to get themselves motivated to play for a team that has lost 200 games in the last two years. It's like showing up for work every day at Enron after they stopped cooking the books. Sexson was a fan favorite and the Brewers only legitimate All-Star. He was traded in a cost-cutting move so that we could clear first base for prospect Prince Fielder (now in AA) and bring in Craig Counsell and Junior Spivey. He was traded by Wendy Selig-Prieb, the daughter of Bud.
How big a deal is this to me? I have two, and only two, signed baseballs. One is signed by Gorman Thomas. The other is signed by Richie Sexson.
So suffice it to say the offseason did not start off on the right foot.
But it got worse. The Brewers built a new ballpark, Miller Field, which was supposed to save the franchise. The Brewers evidently felt that they could draw more people to a park that could close its roof in Wisconsin's snowy Aprils and Octobers than it could at open-air Milwaukee County Stadium, which was built in the Milwaukee Braves era. Fair enough. But that assumes that you field a competitive team. The Brewers actually got the State of Wisconsin and Milwaukee County to agree to guarantee that a certain number of season tickets would be sold each year, in addition to getting public financing of the new stadium.
The new stadium gets built and draws pretty well that year. But then people in Milwaukee realize that the reason they didn't go to County Stadium wasn't the green wood chairs, the lack of it's own microbrewery, or the cold spring and fall temperatures. They didn't go because the team stank. And it still stank, because the Brewers didn't want to spend money and made stupid decisions with the money they did spend. They signed Jeffrey Hammonds, for God's sake. Brewers season records since the opening of the new stadium:
2001 68-94
2002 56-106
2003 68-94
So the local governments were not happy to begin with, but were particularly unhappy when the Brewers announced that they would cut their payroll from last year's $40 million to $30 million. The cut was so drastic that Ulice Payne Jr., then the team president, went public with the plan to cut salary and then resigned. This is particularly ironic because in 2001 the Brewers claimed to be the most profitable team in baseball (revenue sharing is a godsend to small-market owners who don't spend money). The five counties around Milwaukee were outraged, as they paid the lion's share of the costs of building Miller Park and were on the hook for to buy out season tickets that the Brewers have no hope of selling. The Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau is now auditing the team's books.
Things started looking up in early January, when Paul Molitor was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame. People don't remember the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers much any more, but they had four Hall of Famers - pitchers Rollie Fingers, Don Sutton, shortstop Robin Yount and third baseman Molitor. (By the way, Yankee fans, if you're worried about A-Rod moving from SS to 3B, Molitor did the same thing in 1979 with no problem. He had been brought up to play SS when Yount took 1978 off to become a professional golfer, then got moved to 3B when Yount came back. For three years, they were one of the best offensive and defensive left sides of the infield of all time).
At this point came a ray of sunshine. A momentous occasion. A day long ago forseen by the gods, but believed to be myth by even the most fervent of believers.
The Seligs, in a bout of uncharacteristic good judgement, decided to sell the team.
The day of the announcement, Friday 16 January 2004, is the Greatest Day in the History of Time. I accept no argument on this point.
For years after the Thomas trade, people didn't understand why I hated Bud Selig so. The man had sold off the stars I worshiped as a child, offering future Hall of Famer a pay cut to stay with the team (he left to become the World Series MVP with Toronto), trading Thomas, denying the great Cecil Cooper a chance to make a run at 3,000 hits and a Hall plaque. But hadn't the likes of George Steinbrunner done the same things (this was in the 1980s, when the Yankees actually did suck)?
Then Bud became commissioner. And people understood.
They understood when lead hardline owners to cancel the 1994 World Series.
They understood when he threatened to contract the league after the thrilling 2001 World Series.
They understood when he refused time and again to give Washington DC a baseball team.
They understood when baseball took over the Montreal Expos.
They understood after the debacle of the 2002 All-Star Game.
Don't even get me started on Pete Rose.
The Selig family has run the Brewers since 1970, when Bud, a former used car dealer, bought the Seattle Pilots in bankruptcy court and moved the team to Milwaukee. That was not only before I was born, that was before my parents were even married. That was when George W. Bush hadn't even entered the National Guard. That was seven presidents and three popes ago.
So things were looking up, although its still not clear who on earth was dumb enough to pay the $180 to $200 million the Seligs expect the team to fetch. (As a side note, I'd take the team public like the Packers, though I'm not sure there's enough interest in the team for this to be feasible).
But the Brewers have never been good at sustaining positive momentum, and Molitor's election and the sale of the team were quite enough good karma for the time being. To fix that problem on 7 February Brewers pitcher Luis Martinez, a native of the Dominican Republic, got into an argument with another man in Santo Domingo over parking spots. And then shot him.
So suffice it to say we Brewer fans (I hope it's right to make that word plural) are settling in for a long season of watching what ESPN has rated as one of the ten worst franchises in all of professional sports (but only the second-worst franchise in professional baseball).
When does football start again?
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