Last week, I was telling people that the Brewers and I were “on a break” as though we were dating and I needed some time off. The more I talked about it, the more I realized that being a fan of such a roller coaster team is a lot like being in an unhealthy relationship.
The Brewers are like that guy that you put up with while he yanks you around and just when you’re sick of putting up with his crap and break up with him, he does something like Friday night’s win 2-out 9th inning win against the Cardinals. And then you’re pulled in all over again, convinced this time it will be different.
I was way too involved in the first month of the series and I was taking every loss and every blown save too much to heart, so over the past two weeks I made a marked attempt to distance myself. Otherwise it would have been an awfully long season and no matter how the season ended, I think my fandom would have suffered from the stress of it all and I would have hated the entire team by the time September rolled around.
So last week I flipped the games on occasionally to see the scores, but I refused to get upset. I stayed away from game-threads on message boards and I generally allowed the week to happen without me. Certainly the team didn’t need me, as they kept playing. The world kept spinning and the Brewers spun further off their axis.
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I teased mid-week that the team was making a feeble attempt to win my love back as many of the players wore high socks. But even that would not get be parked in front of a game.
My self-imposed exile ended Friday night when a relative of the CuteSports Boyfriend gave us tickets to the game. They were great seats right in front of Uecker and we couldn’t turn them down.
Boy, did the team reward me.
I can only think of two other times in my life that I had as good of a time at a sporting event as I did during the ninth inning of Friday’s Brewer game:
1. When I worked for the Milwaukee Wave and they won their first Championship
2. Being at the 2006 Frozen Four when Wisconsin won the semi-final at the Bradley Center (the final had little suspense)
But as the Brewers continued to get hits with two outs, you could feel the electricity in the crowd. We were all biting our knuckles, wishing and hoping, but not letting ourselves get our hopes too high, since this team has been so good at dashing them this year. It was such a crazy, united feeling of “what if” while all of us wondered if we were nuts for trying to have faith that this team could pull out the victory at the last minute. One moment you were thinking to yourself how a big win at the end could be a turning point for this team that’s floundering and the next you were cursing yourself for being idiot enough to think that they could.
It was spectacular and nerve-wracking and everything that is great about sports and it was for a middlin’ team in the second month of the season!
