The wise old Brewers fan

[HarveysWBs]

 

“But men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the thing themselves.”

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There is this Brewers fan I know who is renowned for his wisdom, which is plainly apparent in his demeanor.  While all around him lose their heads, he alone keeps his.  Or maybe he’s just a quiet drunk.  But I seek the truth of things, so I often belly up to the bar and occupy the stool next to his.  

 

Now, you see, I’m skeptical by nature.  I’ve seen a lot of misfortune in my sporting lifetime, and have little patience for poets waxing on about the romanticism of baseball.  Not this game, the game which I love and which takes my love and runs around with it to every fan of every franchise but mine, even Miami! No, not for me is such treacle.

 

So I devised a test.  I would query this wise old Brewers fan and ask him what he thinks of the Cream City Nine, and if his eyes twinkled and he gave me some platitude about keeping the faith, or showed me a hype video, or fed me some Brad Pitt/Aaron Sorkin line about an island of misfit toys or some such nonsense, I’d politely tell him to go pound suds.

 

So it was opening weekend and as the Brewers dropped the first two against the lowly Cubs, I said to him, “Surely the Brewers are overrated.”

 

And to my surprise, he did not do any of the things I feared.  He simply replied, “we’ll see.”

 

A fair assessment, after all, two games does not a season make.  So I went about my life much as before, and the Crew finished April winning 15 of the next 20 games.

 

I returned to the wise old Brewers fan and said to him, “the Brewers have righted the ship, the division will be assured.”

 

To which he replied, “we’ll see.”

 

But when the Cardinals played us tough and continued to hang around the division standings, I said to him, “our old enemies are back, and unlike last year, we won’t be able to hold them off in the end.”

 

To which he replied, “we’ll see.”

 

And when Yelich hit five bombs in his first 31 games, I said to him, “surely Yelich is back!”

 

To which he replied, “We’ll see.”

 

And when Yelich was putting up his lowest line drive percentage of his career and did nothing but kill worms in the second half of May, I said to him, “Yelich is never coming back.”

 

To which he replied, “We’ll see.”

 

And when the Brewers were 13 games over .500 near the end of May, I said, “this is the best Brewers team I’ve ever seen!”

 

To which he replied, “We’ll see.”

 

And when Woodruff and Peralta and Renfroe and Adames all hit the IL simultaneously, and Hader blew a save, and the Brewers lost so many games in a row, and the Cardinals took first place, and Counsell’s seat got warm for the first time ever, I said, “the Crew really sucks.”

 

To which he replied, “Yeah, they suck.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J/k, he said, “we’ll see.”