(J. Lucroy; Photo: Newsday.com)

Team USA’s latest flop in the World Baseball Classic has ignited yet another round of debate over whether Team USA is enthusiastic, prepared or skilled enough to play with the best international teams in March.  Granted, the timing of the event is a bit off to begin with when it comes to when most U.S. players are ready to play games at a high level.  Still, what are we doing wrong here?  It seems every time this event comes around, Team USA’s roster looks pretty good, but then several players get injured or back out before the tournament starts. 

I really like the WBC as an idea, and I was looking forward to it again this year.  But it’s not very much fun for fans of Team USA to watch thousands of fans screaming for hours for the other team, having a great old time, and meanwhile observe grave, sedate looks on the faces of U.S. players as things slip away again.  It’s a cut-throat tournament, no doubt.  It’s like playing a couple Wild Card games and if it doesn’t work out, you’re done.  But it just seems the passion isn’t there, especially when some of the key games are being played on U.S. soil.  Team USA appears to wilt under the pressure.  So what if there are a lot of fans of Team Republica Dominicana or Puerto Rico in attendance.  You’re playing in Arizona and Miami!  Where the heck is the advantage…and shouldn’t there be one?  In Jerry Crasnick’s article linked above, Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips has the following quote: ‘When you see other countries play…You just see how everybody’s passion is totally different than in our country’.  Do U.S. fans not care about the WBC? 

Certainly, some fans do.  I saw those who came out to the games waving flags and cheering on Team USA.  Admittedly, I did not rush out and purchase airfare, lodging and tickets.  But there weren’t enough folks out in support.  Perhaps U.S. fans are playing hard to get.  Maybe they need to see some real production and success out of the U.S. squad before they get emotionally invested in this event.  Maybe they need to see the best U.S. players on the field.  I really can’t blame them for that.  When the U.S. moved on to Miami, I thought they had a decent shot to jump from there to San Francisco.  The pitching seemed to be OK, despite my disagreement with having knuckler R.A. Dickey as the #1 starter, and the hitting was good enough.  But then in the games against the Dominican and Puerto Rico, the U.S. revealed just how badly discombobulated the team was, once again, and also how heavily outgunned they were in terms of fan support in a U.S. city, albeit one with an enormous Hispanic and Latino American community.    

I heard some rumblings nominating Miller Park as one of the U.S. sites for the event in the future.  I think that notion raises some interesting scenarios.  I would be curious to see what kind of differences it would make to hold WBC games in cold-weather cities with retractable-roof stadiums.  Toronto hosted some first-round games in the past.  Would Milwaukee pack the house and scream its head off for the WBC?  Or does it just not make sense to send the WBC into snow-covered cities?  I don’t know.  I do know the Dominican and Puerto Rican teams were filled with All-stars and simply outplayed the U.S. this year.  But I also find myself wondering what the U.S. could have done to avoid yet another bounce from the Classic.  We’ve got plenty of time to think about it.  Thanks go to all the American players and coaches for their efforts; hopefully this country can figure this conundrum out by the time the next one rolls around.

I was on a train one time and I was wearing a Brewers hat.  

This was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my friends and I were riding the light rail train back from Target Field.  It was a sunny day and we’d had some beers.  I started talking to some guy who was also riding the train away from downtown Minneapolis.  That’s when he said something to me that I haven’t been able to shake since, for whatever reason.

“The Milwaukee Brewers are the devil”, he told me.

“The devil?” I asked, dumbfounded.  Surely this had to be false.  I imagined the Brewers could be Mephistopheles, a fiend, a spirit, demon, ghoul, ghost or poltergeist.  The Brewers baseball club had at times been a nightmare; could they also be a banshee, bogeyman, vampire or incubus?  Perhaps the club was merely a phantasm on the level of an apparition, genie or wraith.  A gnome, dwarf, elf, leprechaun, pixie, sprite, troll, ogre or hobgoblin: surely not.  Could my beloved baseball team be an archfiend such as Old Nick to anyone, even to Minnesotans? 

I understood border rivalries, or at least I thought I did.

“Hey, this guy says the Brewers are the devil”, I told my friends.  “Whaddya think about that?”

I turned back to the man, who was unassuming but dreadfully serious.  He was not fooling. 

“You don’t actually think the Brewers are the devil, do you?  I mean, I understand you not liking them because they’re from Wisconsin, but do you mean it?” I pleaded.

“The Milwaukee Brewers are the devil”, he said again, matter of fact, just like that.

Again, I poured on the interrogation inquisitively.  I wanted to get to the root of this problem and solve it.  I couldn’t imagine what specter, shadow or spook this man had seen in the Brewers.  I didn’t want to see his vision, but I wanted to understand it.  There are no monsters in me, I thought to myself.  Then I thought better.

I tried to trick the guy into revealing the source of his dissatisfaction, his discontentment, perhaps his secret blues.  Was he disconsolate because of some previous trauma?  Surely I can understand a Minnesotan’s cheerless despair when it comes to the Green Bay Packers.  But the Milwaukee Brewers?  What have they ever done to anyone?  No really, what have they done?  Not much!

But he wouldn’t budge.  He wouldn’t even answer my questions any longer.  He just looked elsewhere, dejected, downcast, turned away.  I felt it only polite not to berate him on the subject further.

The mystery remains.  His puzzling remark, whether folly or feint, I’ll never know.

(Image: Wizconsin.blogspot.com)

A recent article on the economic impact of Milwaukee Brewers fans who don’t live in the five-county metro area has revealed some substantial but not very startling figures.  The UW-Milwaukee study, apparently commissioned by MLB, reports that nearly 50 percent of fans at Brewers home games reside in places outside the five-county area, and that those outstate baseball fans contribute as much as $263 million per year to the local economy.  Certainly, many fans come from Madison, the state’s second-largest city, along with bigger cities like Appleton, Eau Claire, etc.  But the cumulative economic punch that these fans provide for the Brewers baseball club, the great city of Milwaukee and its surrounding suburbs is monumental. 

Attendance is up at Brewers games in large part because of the retractable roof at Miller Park.  The roof is sometimes lamentable but never useless.  Miller Park opened in 2001 and has been a boon to the Brewers in their ability to attract fans from outside the metro area.  The roof convinces fans that their drive (or journey in whatever fashion, be it train, donkey or bicycle) will be worth it because a baseball game will be played.  The significance of the guaranteed game cannot be overstated.  Back when the Milwaukee Braves were in town in the 50s and into the very early 60s, Milwaukee was the only nearby major-league town other than Chicago for baseball fans in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas and beyond, going west. 

Once the Twins arrived on the Minnesota prairie in 1961, Milwaukee’s market got a whole lot smaller.  The Twins organization, strangely enough, originated as the Kansas City Blues of the Western League in 1894, and then was the Washington Senators and/or Nationals organization from 1901 until it moved to Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, MN, in time for the 1961 season.  Of course, five years after the Twins arrived in Minnesota, the Milwaukee Braves ownership group that purchased the team in 1962 completed its quest to move the team to Atlanta and the fatter paychecks there.  When Bud Selig was successful in bringing MLB back to Milwaukee in 1970, the newfangled Brewers found themselves boxed in by Detroit to the east, Minneapolis-St. Paul to the west and two teams in the Windy City directly south. 

As happened to the Green Bay Packers when the Minnesota Vikings came around, territory in Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas that may have previously leaned towards the Braves was splintered or fell completely to the new Minnesota franchises.  There is certainly nothing wrong or unnatural about this process.  However, Milwaukee suddenly needed Wisconsinites a lot more than it did previously. 

County Stadium was a great stadium for a time, but it suffered from housing poor Brewers teams for much of its existence.  It began to wear and tear, and was susceptible to freakish weather even during the best months, not to mention snow, rain and abundant unpredictability in April, May and September.  Not that northern weather is unique to Milwaukee, but bad weather is a definite turnoff when one thinks of travelling many miles just to get to the ballpark. 

Those Brewers fans who go to Miller Park often (and perhaps are commuter fans themselves from outside the five-county) probably greet this study’s results with a shrug of knowing confidence.  I’ve noticed it myself.  When I go to Miller Park, I’ll often see evidence that vehicles are there from not only other states but elsewhere in Wisconsin.  In addition, as is part of the great tradition of Brewers baseball games, I often talk with fellow fans when I’m at games and I very often talk with people who are not only not Milwaukeeans, but live hours away from Brew City.                

What this boils down to is some real data and recognition that the Brew Crew is supported by fans from all over the place, not just the five-county Milwaukee area.  Madison, Eau Claire, La Crosse, Green Bay, the Fox Cities and many other Wisconsin cities and towns deserve a shout-out and a very gracious thank-you for coming down and packing Miller Park.  Brewers fans in neighboring states and everywhere in the USA and the world: thank you.  Miller Park’s roof saves the date but all fans together make it happen.  We are Brewers Nation.

There is a feeling of unease, of fear and trembling, among some Brewers fans as the team approaches the start of the regular season.  The fog of the unknown surrounds the Brewers.  Youth possesses potential, but isn’t it only likely that potential will be wasted?  Look at the life of an average person.  There’s potential there, but isn’t it really easy to piss that away?  Wasting potential is effortless. 

Sure, the team signed some bullpen guys that appear to be improvements from last year’s bunch, and the daily lineup is pretty solid.  But couldn’t they have done more?  Would you like to see more?  Is it upon us to resign doubts and have faith in the Brewers?

Most pressingly, the starting rotation looks prone to a letdown.  I hope I’m wrong.  I understand the application of the young arms and all that.  You’ve got Yovani Gallardo as a lock for the rotation.  No problem there.  Marco Estrada as a #2 guy: that’s not what I would consider wise but all right, I suppose.  For the sake of reviewing the rotation after that, it would be, in no particular order: Mike Fiers, who deserves a shot to continue starting after last year’s run, then Wily Peralta, who is owed a chance because it’s about time he gets a real one, and Mark Rogers, who’s simply out of options.  Then they have Chris Narveson, who may or may not be ready to contribute again, and who’s also out of options.  I’m starting to really like the presence of Alfredo Figaro, who is a total wildcard, but could provide some innings as a spot starter if needed.  Is that enough?  Could this season of hopeful promise crash and burn by April?  Should we just stop asking questions, tie ourselves to the mast and embrace what ever will come?

Que será, será, tambien.

By the way, I had the pleasure of doing a Q&A on the Brewers’ upcoming season with  Daniel Shoptaw at the Cards blog C70 At The Bat, be sure to check it out.  In hindsight, I think I may have been a tad too optimistic in my projection for the Brewers’ record.  It could be a bumpy 2013, but that’s life, right?  Thanks.