Brewtown 90210 is a big hit

It is a long way from Beverly Hills to Milwaukee. Perhaps light years.

Mark Attanasio makes the trek often, and happily. Especially these days, when the team he owns, the Brewers, has the best record in baseball. Yes, those Milwaukee Brewers, formerly doormats, a.k.a major league road kill.

They will play the Dodgers May 21-23 in Dodger Stadium, and Attanasio will be the one in the stands who looks like a wealthy investment banker who has an office in Beverly Hills and homes in Brentwood and Malibu. That’s because he is and does.

The marriage of Attanasio and Brewtown is one for the books.

At his day job, Attanasio is senior partner and chief investment officer of Trust Co. of the West, which manages $10 billion in assets for pension funds, endowments, foundations and other institutional sources.

So, when he paid about $200 million for the Brewers in January of 2005, he was used to big-number deals, even if this one was personal and even when his wife, Debbie, asked the key question: “Can we afford to buy a baseball team, dear?”

Life in the investment banking business of Beverly Hills is big desks in high rises and lunch at the Grill on the Alley. It is valet parking, $2,000 suits and business by Blackberry.

At his other day job, which is also a night job, Attanasio presides over a stadium full of people who dance the polka on the roof of the dugouts, never leave a game before it is over no matter what the score, and cheer like crazy in the sixth inning when five people dressed as sausages run a race around the foul lines.

Monday, Attanasio was able to report with pride that the current standings in the sausage race had Hotdog leading with eight wins, followed closely by Italian and Chorizo with four each and Bratwurst and Polish with two apiece.

“There has been some controversy,” Attanasio says, “because it appears that, quite often when I am there, Italian wins.”

There was other controversy last season, when fans started demanding Chorizo be included. Baseball rules didn’t allow introduction of new products in midseason, but Attanasio got a one-game waiver on Hispanic Pride Day and Chorizo raced.

“Then we had to send him back to triple A,” Attanasio says, “for more seasoning.”

OK, so we have an investment banker with a quick wit. That makes one. That also may be the work of longtime Brewers announcer Bob Uecker, one of the funnier people around and a frequent Tonight Show guest with Johnny Carson and now Jay Leno.

“It might have been worth the $200 million just to get to hang around Uecker this much,” Attanasio says.

When Attanasio bought the team, Uecker might have been the only established asset. The Brewers have played in the postseason only twice, losing a division series to the New York Yankees in 1981 and beating the Angels for the American League pennant in ’82 before blowing a 3-2 World Series lead to the St. Louis Cardinals.

But Attanasio, after assuring Debbie that they could, indeed, afford this deal, jumped right in and has loved every minute since.

“I still have this sense of wonderment,” he says. “I walk into the ballpark, I look at the team, and I own it. It’s still a thrill.”

Milwaukee is pretty happy too. He has taken the payroll from $27.7 million when he arrived -- or about $300,000 less than the total Roger Clemens just signed for with the Yankees -- to about $70 million this season. Milwaukee’s 22-10 record is evidence of the progress being made.

This is not lost on the city’s faithful. When Attanasio walks into the city’s famed Pfister Hotel now, the organist segues quickly to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Attanasio blushes.

When he sits in his field-level seat at Miller Park, people bring down beer and bratwurst.

“I gained 15 pounds last year,” he said.

To fix that, Attanasio hired a nutritionist, and the fact that no local columnist has taken that and run with it further attests to how much he is embraced.

In Milwaukee, a nutritionist is somebody who monitors how much beer, butter and onions are in the pot with the bratwurst.

So far, Attanasio has done almost everything right in gaining acceptance. He invested in the local minor league hockey team, the Admirals, and has purchased a condominium in a high rise that is still being built. He will continue to live in Los Angeles, but he will also have a spot of semi-permanence in Milwaukee.

“The mayor told me he likes that I am helping the tax base,” he says.

Likely, the mayor of Los Angeles has no idea who Mark Attanasio is. Nor do many of those around him daily in Beverly Hills.

“If they knew,” Attanasio says, laughing, “they still wouldn’t care.”

What a shame, because right here, in our very community, before our very eyes, is a man who, in about three short years, has managed to fix both the Brewers and their sausage races.

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.