Talkin' Baseball: The red menace

Life as a Brewers’ fan is a mostly stress-free endeavor. The team’s so rarely been competitive in the 30-some years I’ve been following them; I’ve found it hard to get worked up about much of anything. I will admit the 10-year-old me cried when Gorman Thomas struck out to end the ’82 World Series, and I remember watching the team's run in ’92 with an evangelical fervor when I should have been doing more productive things like studying for exams. But even then, there was always the underlying feeling that no matter what the Brewers did, it probably didn’t matter—they weren’t true contenders.

All that changed when they finally landed an owner who cared about winning, and started fielding teams loaded with exciting players, who gave Bernie Brewer more to do than scope the liquored-up talent in the left-field bleachers. I once again found pleasure in decoding box scores like they were the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I’ve endured more than a few sleep-deprived nights worrying about Ryan Braun’s balky ribcage muscles. Mostly though, I’ve come to realize how the team now matters, and danger lurks everywhere.

The most obvious evidence is how my disdain for the Cubs ratcheted up a thousand-fold overnight—where the mere sight of Alfonso Soriano’s smug face makes me want to punch a wall. And I’ve recently become aware of a more hidden threat to the Crew’s newfound success: the St. Louis Cardinals. They’re not as outwardly grating as the Cubs, but they’re just as much a pain in the ass. So with an important three-game homestand against the Cards starting today, we’ll channel Wisconsin’s own former Sen. Joe McCarthy and give you four reasons why this less vocal (but no less subversive) red menace needs to be rooted out and heaped with scorn like our loudmouth rivals in Chicago.

Tony La Russa
Tony La Russa’s on-field record is admittedly impressive—he has a mantle full of division and World Series trophies. That doesn’t change the fact that he carries himself like baseball's Jesus, who was put on this planet to show everyone how smart he is and slowly bleed the fun out of every game he overmanages. La Russa’s such a renowned tinkerer that he has even earned his own “-ization”: the La Russa-ization of baseball. In simple terms, this means doing supposedly groundbreaking things, like batting the pitcher eighth, grinding an already slow (and not particularly complicated) game to a glacial pace, and engaging in the type of childish gamesmanship he pulled when the Brewers were tenderizing his pitching staff last weekend. To wit: Prince Fielder was heading towards the plate when he saw La Russa coming out of the dugout to—surprise!—change pitchers. Fielder went back to the on-deck circle, and La Russa promptly returned to the dugout. Fielder came back to home plate, and only then did La Russa show his face and make his move to the bullpen. In short, anyone who consistently acts like an insufferable ass and gets their hair cut with garden shears deserves our contempt.

The best fans in baseball
Throw a dead bird anywhere in the Midwest, and you’ll hit someone itching to tell you how Cardinals fans are the greatest ever. I’m not exactly sure how this is quantified: Do they cheer the loudest? Care the most? During the last eight years, they haven’t been first in attendance or sellouts, so that can’t be why they’re supposedly in the top spot. Could it be how smart and decent they are—cheering when an opponent makes a good play, and regularly engaging in other beatific displays of baseball reverence? What’s interesting, however, is that Busch Stadium is the place where those “Zambrano Mows My Lawn” T-shirts first surfaced. Beyond the overtly racist message found in a silhouette of a dude wearing a sombrero while pushing a lawnmower, someone might want to inform the geography Ph.D.s in St. Louis that Carlos Zambrano is from Venezuela, which is a very different Latin American country than the one they’re trying to mock.

Tuck off
Last year, the classy Mike Cameron started untucking his jersey after Brewers’ victories as a way to honor his father, who would do the same thing when he came home from work. His teammates followed suit, and a cool, blue-collar tradition was born. In their self-anointed roles as The Guardians Of The Game, La Russa and Cardinals’ fans took offense, and suggested the Brewers were showing them up and disrespecting baseball’s traditions. Beyond the fact that it’s mystifying to imagine how this can possibly be construed as brash or ungracious, no one in St. Louis can let it go. As recently as last week, sportswriters at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch were still bitching about it—over and over and over. Hey, guys: You didn’t invent the game. It’s also worth noting that when the infallible La Russa was, ahem, arrested for DUI, his shirt was untucked. Maybe ol’ Tone should consider showing a little more respect for the boys in blue.

Retribution
No one should feel sorry for the Brewers because they lost their one and only World Series appearance. And it’s no one’s fault but the team’s that they stumbled punch-drunk through the baseball wilderness for decades. But it just so happens the Cardinals were the team that beat the Brewers in ’82, and that’s going to leave a mark. It’s always going to be extra special to bust out the whupping stick, and we've recently been handing them some first-rate thrashings. Last year, the Crew took 10 of 15 from the Cards, and their recent three-game lathering was plenty satisfying. Though, this modest success should only be looked at as the beginning—we have a long freaking way to go before we can wipe this slate clean.