Brewers Are the Toast of Milwaukee

It is Easter in dairy land. The County Stadium parking lot is one big tailgate party. Car trunks are propped open like clams. Bratwursts sizzle on small grills. It is a lazy, hazy day. The only thing missing is Nat King Cole singing about sodas and pretzels and beer.

Before the day is over, a men’s choir will have sung at home plate, a platoon of prancing groundskeepers in yellow lederhosen will have raked the infield, the Milwaukee Brewers will have won another baseball game, and a boyish looking outfielder with the adorable name of Rob Deer will have described the beginning of the season as “the funnest time I’ve ever had.”

In Wisconsin, it is hip to be square. Visiting here, you always get the feeling that these people know something the rest of us don’t know. Although you are reluctant to stereotype, it is sort of cute here. The only cares in the world seem to be the drinking age and the speed limit. Cocaine seems so, so . . . California. So Florida. So New York. Up here, the only white stuff is cottage cheese.

None of it is true, of course. Wisconsin is no picnic. Reggie Jackson and entire minor league hockey teams have been involved in barroom brawls here. North Carolina basketball players have been shelled with coins while playing Marquette. The state university at Madison leads the Big Ten in rowdy parties, if nothing else. And more than one Green Bay Packer has been brought up on charges of inhumanlike-conduct.

Still, there is something about the Milwaukee Brewers and their disciples that is so decent, so wholesome, that their 11-0 head start on the major league season becomes all the more welcome. At last, they have recovered from the disappointment of 1982, when they were one win away from taking the World Series. No Brewer has ever won one of those. Braves have, but not Brewers.

Maybe this is a mirage. In their division, any of seven teams is certainly capable of peeling off this many wins in a row. And the Brewers, who finished sixth in that division a year ago, certainly could lose a bunch in a row. Juan Nieves won’t pitch a no-hitter every time out. Teddy Higuera won’t go 20-0. Deer will cool down, as will Greg Brock, Bill Schroeder and Dale Sveum. This madness can’t last.

How nice, though, if it could. Here is a team, stocked mostly from its own garden, with the 23rd lowest average salary per player of baseball’s 26 organizations.

The shortstop who took the .432 batting average into Saturday’s action, Sveum, is making $70,000. The relief pitcher with the 0.90 earned-run average, Chuck Crim, is making the rookie minimum: $62,500. The no-hit man, Nieves, earns $115,000. Even the man who calls the shots, Tom Trebelhorn, gets only 100 grand, lowest salary of any manager in the majors.

Treb, as the players call him, still insists with a wink that the best thing about Milwaukee’s fast start is that: “I’m sittin’ here with a one-year contract.”

To a man, the Brewers ascribe their early success to the hard work of Trebelhorn, 39, who took over for nine games last season after George Bamberger decided to retire.

Harry Dalton, a general manager who has been around some, said: “He ran the best training camp this spring that I’ve ever seen. I’ve been with some managers who knew how to run a training camp, too. George Bamberger was good. Earl Weaver was excellent. But Tom was the best.”

Said center fielder Robin Yount: “We didn’t waste any time down there. We took care of business. We worked on two things: Conditioning and baseball. Period. It was the most well-organized camp I’ve ever seen.”

Catcher Bill Schroeder, a slowpoke who is amazing people by bunting and stealing bases and legging out infield hits, feels like a new man under the new man.

“Treb drilled it into our heads all spring that we were a good club. Last year was last year and it don’t mean (bleep) now. We’re not beating ourselves like we did. Our attitude is totally different. Guys like each other around here now, and I attribute that to Treb. It’s the same bunch of guys, but now we’re all pulling on the same end of the rope.”

Schroeder likes it that Trebelhorn, who never made it to the majors, runs in the outfield with the players, hits fungoes, fields grounders, pitches batting practice and isn’t afraid to mix.

“He’s also the first one to go up to somebody after a miserable game and pat them on the back,” Schroeder said, although there have not been many miserable games.

Trebelhorn downplays what he has done, saying: “To this point, it’s been pretty easy for me. Some pitching changes, a few moves here and there. No magic.”

But outfielder Glenn Braggs doesn’t see it that way. He said, “We’ve got a manager who’s aggressive, and that rubs off on the players.”

Who could have foreseen it that the team batting average after 10 games would be .315? Or that Deer already would have five homers and an average above .400? Or that Greg Brock, who struggled so mightily with the Dodgers, would hit safely in his first eight games, with three home runs? Or that pitchers Dan Plesac, Mark Clear, Chris Bosio and Mark Ciardi, not exactly a fearsome foursome, between them would be 4-0 with five saves?

It was no shock that Yount or Paul Molitor would get off with the crack of the bat, but these other guys . . . ? What’s going on around here?

Said Braggs: “The only word I can think of is: ‘Outrageous.’ ”

Deer, the young slugger who hit 33 homers last season, said: “If you could explain it, you probably could do it more often. We all started off swinging the bats pretty well, and now nobody can be pitched around. We get a run down, two down, it’s like: ‘So what?’ ”

“I honestly could have seen this team going in either direction--real good or real bad,” said Molitor, the veteran. “Young players are so impressionable. That’s why it was so important to get off to a start like this. We’ve won some close games. Losing close games can break a team’s heart. You can start assuming the entire season is going to be one close loss after another. Now, these guys can see themselves winning 30 or 40 one-run games. Their hearts are on fire.”

And Wisconsin has responded. Marketing manager Dick Hackett expected 8,000 to 10,000 customers for Friday’s game against Texas. The crowd that showed up was 41,548.

“Ticket sales are going bananas,” said Hackett, who has had to keep windows open and put workers on overtime.

What’s going on here?

Maybe Mr. Baseball can explain it.

“There’s nothing fluky about it,” said Bob Uecker, who broadcasts Brewer games from somewhere well behind the first row. “We could see in spring training it would be a decent club. Now they’re out there playing solid defense, not making mistakes, getting unbelievably big hits. It just shows that the predictions people make in spring training don’t mean diddly-do.

“This is really good for the city, too. I was here when the Braves won, and with the Brewers in ‘82, and I’ve seen the kind of excitement they’ve created in the town and in the whole state. Now I’m already getting calls from Europe and from people who heard the scores on Armed Forces Radio, and they all want to know: ‘Hey, what’s going on there?’ ”

Trebelhorn’s Traveling Band, that’s what’s going on.

They hit five homers in one game at Baltimore. They no-hit the Orioles the next night. They already have three wins from ace starter Teddy Higuera. Rookie catcher B.J. Surhoff was hitting .316 after 10 games with two game-winning RBIs. Sveum, a virtual rookie, was hitting .432 going into Saturday’s game. Deer was hitting .429. Molitor, .386. Yount, .326. Brock, .313.

Trebelhorn said: “It’s been a lot of fun, and we hope it lasts a long time. We all know some pitcher can go out there and throw some buzz-bombs at us and stop us at any time. But how we’ve played so far is not a surprise to me. What did surprise me was the consistency of the intensity. These guys play hungry every day. To me, that’s been far more amazing than 10-0.”

While he talked, Trebelhorn wore a fielder’s mitt and pounded it like a kid. Someone said it looked as though he, too, was hungry to get out there and play.

“I am,” he said.

Another Pete Rose, someone said.

“No, I proved a long time ago that I’m not Pete Rose,” Treb said.

Of his sudden renown as a manager, Trebelhorn reflected back to spring training.

“I was described as a no-nonsense guy,” he said, alluding to the remarks by Dalton, Yount and others on his serious approach to camp. “But we do try to have fun. We have as much goofin’ around as anybody. If you want to be serious all the time, go sell something for a living. Don’t play ball, for golly sakes. Go sell and make a lot of money. Then you can be serious all you want.

“The only thing I want around me is good people. I’ve seen some pretty bad actors around the league. When they win, they’re fine. When they lose, they’re a pain in the neck. Anybody can handle winning. It’s like with the fans. If you win, you’re all right. But when we lose, somewhere in the crowd there’s going to be a bunch of bums booing us and telling us to eat (bleep). The people who can boo anything, they just come out to root and hoot and toot.

“Fortunately for us, Milwaukee people generally are the kind who appreciate a good effort. Some places, they just judge you by your name, or by the way you look, or by your salary. Here, they’re honest and fair, God love ‘em. If you short change ‘em on the effort, they’ll get on you. These people know effort when they see it.”

A sellout crowd Friday was on its feet practically from the start. The game’s starting time was delayed nearly half an hour just to accommodate those who were still on the freeway. When a local disc jockey, located downtown, advised everyone stuck in their automobiles outside County Stadium to honk their horns, the noise could be heard for miles, not to mention inside the park.

Said Deer: “When they called out the opening lineups, I had goose bumps. There was yelling like a World Series. I just didn’t want to trip when I ran out there. Even during stretching, you could hear everybody in back of the stadium, honking horns and everything. It was the funnest night I’ve ever had.”

Although the Brewers had only two hits after five innings, the crowd stayed alive. There was dancing in the aisles during the seventh-inning stretch, when loudspeakers blasted the Huey Lewis and the News song “It’s Hip to Be Square,” which ought to be the Wisconsin’s state anthem. The Brewers responded with a seven-run seventh.

And after a strikeout polished off the ninth inning, and the Brewers once more had won, 10-2, Schroeder, the catcher, took the game ball and flung it into the stands. And no one stopped clapping until Higuera, the pitcher, took a curtain call.

Someone from Milwaukee asked Trebelhorn how it felt to win 10 in a row.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “We played well for the 10th time, and we won our 10th ballgame. How’s it feel to ask that kind of question?”

“Great,” the guy said.

“Right. Great,” Treb agreed.

TEAMS WITH THE FASTEST STARTS . . . AND WHERE THEY FINISHED

Start Year Team W-L Finish 13-0 1982 Atlanta Braves 89-73 Won division 11-0 1981 Oakland A’s 64-45* Won division 11-0 1987 Milwaukee Brewers 10-0 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers 98-55 Won World Series 10-0 1962 Pittsburgh Pirates 93-68 Fourth in division 10-0 1966 Cleveland Indians 81-81 Fifth in division 9-0 1918 New York Giants 71-53 Second in division 9-0 1940 Brooklyn Dodgers 88-65 Second in division 9-0 1944 St. Louis Browns 89-65 Won pennant 9-0 1984 Detroit Tigers 104-58 Won World Series 8-0 1915 Philadelphia Phillies 90-62 Won pennant 8-0 1980 Cincinnati Reds 89-73 Third in division 8-0 1982 Chicago White Sox 87-75 Won division

* Strike-shortened season.