Brew rule

 I don’t care what you say, ya party poopers. Bob Uecker was in the front roooowww last night,  and that’s all there is to it.

Yeah, sure, you couldn’t see him down there in Tampa, but that is the way of things ethereal. He was there, holding an incorporeal Miller Lite.  He was in the visitors clubhouse, trying to touch the Big Trophy with an invisible hand. Thankfully, an incorporeal Eddie Mathews (1931-2001) was there to stop him.

“Better not, Ueck,” the ghost of Eddie whispered. “You never had the best hands, you know.”

But they were there, the two of them, and who knows, maybe the joint pwas crowded with the ghosts of old Milwaukee Braves and Brewers (And old Seattle Pilots! Hell, yeah, Jim Bouton) as these new-age Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 to win the World Series first time in franchise history.

The Brewers Crew did it in style, too, sweeping the moneybags Dodgers in the NLCS and nearly sweeping the Rays in the Series. Only a walk-off single in the bottom of the 12th in Game 4 saved the Rays from the Dodgers’ fate.

Otherwise, it was all Brewers, who had the best record in baseball in the regular season and then showed everyone why by going 11-2 in the playoffs and wining eight straight at one point.

This was a team of young, hungry, impeccably disciplined players, who never took an at-bat off and were relentless in their approach. They were simply a joy to watch.

In which case raise a Blatz, if you’ve got one, to the Brewers and the city they represent. It’s been a long time — 69 years — since Milwaukee got to celebrate a World Series championship, and then it was the Braves. The Brewers had never won one, not in 56 summers.

Or 57, if you count the one season they were the Seattle Pilots. And why not? 

That was 1969, the year Jim Bouton immortalized the Pilots in “Ball Four.” And so, yeah, raise a glass, too, to Bouton and Gerry McNertney and Gary Bell. To Don Mincher and Merritt Ranew and Diego Segui. To Steve Hovley and Tommy Harper and of course Joe Schultz, the Pilots manager who told his boys to pound that Budweiser after every rare Pilots win.

No doubt an incorporeal Joe (1918-1996) is pounding a Budweiser at this very moment.

Or, in deference to Milwaukee, a Blatz. You betcha.