Along with Danny's baseball wisdom, came a deep love for the Milwaukee Brewers, or as they were known at the time, Harvey's Wallbangers. Incidentally, for a great composite of how I like to remember this team, from another's point of view anyways, check this out: Cardboard Gods by the great Josh Wilker.
This was the summer of 1982, (obviously, from the suggested reading I just plugged above) and my brother Dan and I immersed ourselves fully into Harvey's Kuenn's band of crazy, lovable, powerful, goonish baseball knights in blue pinstripes. These rawhide chesspieces were a great vehicle that my brother used to school me on how the game worked, and he was good at it. It eventually spread out into the backyard, where he taught me to catch a tennis ball, after helping me break in a new glove, and started bestowing on me the skill of how to swing a baseball bat and not look like a complete doofus while doing so.
The Brewers were good, good enough to take the Cardinals to Game 7, but not enough to win it. Short closer Rollie Fingers due to a rotator cuff injury, they just couldn't put the Redbirds away, and due to this fact I will forever hate that team with a burning passion for the hot tears that they caused to roll down a 10 year old boy's cheeks on late October evening.
Otherwise, those were fun days.
Jump forward a couple of years. My folks and I moved into a house in town and with that residence came a new novelty, cable television, and with that, WGN-TV and daily Chicago Cubs games. Due to the fact the Cubbies were in the National League, unlike my Brewers American League residence, I felt no guilt in becoming a fan. Unless a mutual I-94 World Series occurred, there was no harm, no foul in rooting for the Baby Bears.
It was also a benefit that the Cubs, in this summer of 1984, made the playoffs for the first time since the dinosaurs were made extinct. They were fun to watch with youngsters like Ryne Sandberg, Jody Davis and Bob Dernier, intermingling with grizzled vets Ron Cey, Gary "Sarge" Matthews, and Larry Bowa. Thanks to that bastard Steve Garvey and his upstart San Diego Padres, the North Shore Cubs jaunt into the playoffs only lasted one painful round.
Little did I know this little factoid: Danny had a mutual love for the same Chicago Team I had and for the same goddamn reason. They were on TV every day during the summer. That's right. WGN-TV carried all Chicago Cubs games, home and road, all season long. And ten years prior to my discovery, my brother had the same one. Unbeknownst to me.
Mind you, Danny and I had watched countless hours of the national pastime as experienced by the Brewtown Bombers together, we listened to Bob Uecker and Dwayne Moseley calling Crew games on hot summer afternoons while we shot the frisbee, the baseball and the shit. He had taken me to numerous games at vaunted Milwaukee County Stadium, where he bought me sodas, hot dogs, and Cracker Jack, all while watching our heroes in blue, white, and yellow.
All the while, his number one team was the Cubs.
I had no idea.
I found this out years later when the ultimate nightmare for two baseball-loving people in my brother and I's position was revealed to the world. MLB moved the Milwaukee Brewers to the Senior Circuit.
And put them in the same division as the Cubs.
I said it like that, in a sentence separated from a paragraph, to of course be dramatic. Where the hell else would you put a team that resides in Milwaukee? I digress.
And when my brother and I came to discuss this seeming abomination committed by the league, he said it while on a telephone conversation.
"I'll be rooting for the Cubbies, Rob."
My head spun, I dropped the phone, my legs got weak. I never spoke to that son of a bitch again.
I'm kidding, of course. His indoctrination into the Grand Ol' Game was the age-old Northern Illinois stalwarts. You always imprint on your first experience with something, as I did when Dan first blessed me with the Milwaukee Brewers. You can't change after that, it's impossible. It just can't be done, at least not without withdrawal, irritation, and eventually excruciating pain, and really, it's just baseball. There's no need for that shit.
He rooted for the Brewers in '82 for the same reason that I rooted for the Cubs in 1984. The Brewers were in a completely separate league from his team, and he saw no sin in pulling for the local Milwaukee boys as their success started to bring them into the limelight.
Same damn thing I did with the Cubs in 1984 as they made a run.
The Brewers were just the baseball ride Dan chose to take me on in that moment, as the 1982 Cubs finished 73-89 and 19 games out of first place. The Brewers were successful and far more exciting. Who could blame that beautiful bastard for making that decision. I couldn't be happier with how it worked out.
The only difference is, despite the fact that he will always put his beloved Cubbies first, Danny wishes no ill will on the Brewers. I myself have however disowned the Baby Bears. A heavy taste of the Lou Piniella-led out fit, containing the likes of Derrek Lee, Carlos Zambrano, Alfonso Soriano, and Geovany Soto, et al's antics, circa the late 2000's, really turned me off. I'm sure the Brewers have had their share of idiots in recent years, but Danny has chosen not to hold that against my favorite team. But me, I'm a homer.
I guess he's just a bigger man than me.
I do find it fascinating, the parallells at work here. The similarities in the reasons that we did things in regard to these two baseball clubs, but for the opposite team. There was just a fork in the road in terms of personal preference, and we went in different directions, chose different paths.
Danny's got a World Series however. Jealous of that as I may be, I shall hold no ill will.
I love my brother for many, many reasons. Baseball's just one of them.
Thank you, Danny.
No comments:
Post a Comment