Playoff baseball is in the air
Baseball is my favorite sport.
Unfortunately, my favorite baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers have only rarely been competitive in my lifetime.
They’ve never won a World Series.
The Brew Crew’s only trip to the Series was in 1982 when I was still in my mother’s womb.
For most of my early childhood the Brewers were mediocre. For most of my adolescence, they were downright bad.
I always said that it was fitting that my first baseball game was a 10-1. The only saving grace of that day in 1991 was that my favorite player Paul Molitor hit a solo homerun.
Aside from a few cool happenings--Robin Yount’s 3,000th hit, Pat Listach’s rookie season--the team was hard to watch.
The small market team could not compete. Making it to the playoffs seemed like something that would only happen in my backyard fantasies.
Thankfully, the tide turned in 2008 when a young crop of talent arrived in Milwaukee. It was an exciting time, but the team was easily dispatched by the Philadelphia Phillies in the first round.
The Crew made a return trip in 2011, but were set home by their playoff nemesis the St. Louis Cardinals in the second round.
Playoff baseball is thrilling, but unfortunately, I couldn’t get tickets for either series. Nor could I really afford them if I did. I was only a few years out of college and the country was in the midst of the great recession.
At the time, it was even a struggle for me to watch the games. I didn’t have cable and streaming was limited.
Now, after wandering in the wilderness for a few years, the Crew are back and making a push.
Like many baseball fans in Wisconsin, when the Brewers postseason tickets went on sale, I set a plan in motion to get tickets.
The last time I tried to get brewers playoff tickets (either in 2008 or 2011), there was an email lottery system. And I did not win. But that was probably a good thing. I am not sure I could have afforded the tickets.
This time around I can afford it, even if it is a big expense. Playoff baseball doesn’t come to Milwaukee very much and the 12 year old boy in me didn’t want to miss it this time around.
I am sure my 12 year old self would mock me, had I not tried to go to at least one playoff game this seasons.
This time around, getting tickets was about flooding the Brewers website and beating other fans to the punch. Where do I want to sit. How much can I afford. What game should I go to.
These are all decisions I tried to make in the moment.
But largely these decisions were made for me. I took the best available tickets I could get for the game that had tickets available.
It turned out to be Game 1 of the National League Division Series. I write that out because I think most casual watchers of the game are really confused as to what the NLDS stands for.
Not that National League Division Series is much more understandable (It is called the division series because it is a playoff of the division winners and one wild card team that snuck into the party).
CRAIG SAUER is a writer, communicator and former journalist living in Fitchburg, Wis. He a life-long Milwaukee Brewers fan who has never seen his team play in the World Series.
