The Brewers--Team That Made a City Delirious

Earth to Brewers. Earth to Brewers.

How are things in the Twilight Zone? I’m calling from Earth. Having a great time. Wish you were here.

I caught your act at Anaheim Stadium Monday night, where you beat the Angels, 10-7, in 12 innings. That’s 17 wins in your first 18 games, but who’s counting?

I want to warn you fellows not to get cocky. This season isn’t over yet. The rest of the American League has a week or so to slap some sense into your young heads.

Not that you are cocky. Somehow your amazing start would be easier for the rest of the league to accept if you were a bunch of pompous jerks. Like a certain World Series championship team I could mention, but won’t.

“I think it’s a good story,” Tom Trebelhorn, your manager, told me Monday night before the game. “We’re awfully nice guys.”

Good story? Put it on film and it would blow “Hoosiers” off the screen. Bunch of swell kids, 24 Eagle Scouts from simple, Midwestern town get no respect in spring training, then take over major league baseball.

They refer to their fans lovingly as “cheeseheads” and accept their early success with humble graciousness. They even have a guy named Braggs, who never does, even when he drives in the winning runs with a 12th-inning-double like he did Monday night.

Great story. It’s heartwarming. It’s inspiring. It’s dramatic. The only thing it’s not is believeable.

Your coach, Andy Etchebarren, pretty much summed things up Monday when he told me, “Nobody’s this good.”

He went on to say that you haven’t been lucky, that you really have been outplaying teams every day and night.

“If you watched those 17 games,” he said, “the people we played against, they don’t think this is a fluke. I’m not saying we’re this good, but those people will tell you this is a competitive team.”

I have to tell you guys that the word “fluke” does pop up occasionally in discussions of your ballclub. All the experts expected you to win 17 games, but most of them thought it would take you until June or July to do it. Sports Illustrated picked you the 20th best team in the major leagues.

You’ve got a lot of people scrambling around trying to find explanations for what’s going on out there. The best anybody has been able to come up with so far is this: You had a real nice spring training.

“We worked hard,” second baseman Jim Gantner said. “We always had something to do. We have a great attitude, a lot of enthusiasm, it’s carried over from spring training.”

Now please, gentlemen. Do you really expect us to accept this as the explantion for your great start? That’s like me writing a Pulitzer Prize-winner and attributing it to starting my morning off with a really healthy breakfast.

Then there’s the Trebelhorn Theory. You’re winning because your manager is such a positive, upbeat guy.

“He’s up all the time,” Etchebarren said. “He’s very organized.”

So’s my accountant.

The theory is that Trebelhorn makes everyone on the team feel so happy and comfortable and welcome that they just want to go out and win every doggone game for him.

Right. I guess if the Yankees want to catch you this season, they should go out and hire Bill Cosby.

I have to admit, Trebelhorn does seem to be a delightful guy. Every reporter is his friend. He takes pregame calisthenics with the team, pitches batting practice and probably collects bubble gum cards. But what’s his real secret?

Look, I’m not trying to make it sound like you guys are dreaming and any day you’ll wake up and find yourselves in the major leagues, and you’ll apologize and move down into the second division, where you belong.

I saw you play. You have a left fielder named Rob Deer who actually runs like Bambi. But if he keeps hitting like he has been, he’ll have to change his name to Rob Godzilla.

He hit an 800-foot homer Monday night off Mike Witt--400 feet high and 400 feet long.

You fellows took a 5-0 lead into the bottom of the fourth, then the Angels scored four. They chased starter Juan (No No) Nieves, which was the worse thing they could have done. If you Brewers have a legitimate strength, it’s your bullpen.

Monday night, your pen looked shaky, but that can happen, as anyone who has lived in greater L.A. the last decade or so can tell you.

Now that you’ve won a game in California, I think the world will start to take you seriously. Next week, you’ll probably be on the cover of People magazine, Rolling Stone and GQ.

And if you’re looking for an agent to market your rap video and line of T-shirts, or write the authorized history of your 1987 season, let me know. Meanwhile, have a nice time the rest of your road trip, or Magical Mystery Tour, or whatever you call it.

This is Earth to Team America, over and out.