Barb Caffrey's Blog

Folks, I’m still in a holding pattern with regard to my housing situation, but I can at least write about my favorite baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers, even if it’s not what I had hoped to write.

“What are you talking about, Barb?” you might be asking.

The Brewers are in the National League Championship Series (NLCS for short) against the “best team money can buy,” the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers have a huge payroll that’s almost four times as much as what the Brewers can afford (Milwaukee is the smallest “market” in major league baseball, though if you add in the entirety of the state of Wisconsin, it’s comparable to a few others even if nowhere near the Dodgers), and in particular, their pitchers are very highly paid because they’re all proven winners.

That being said, you still have to perform. You have to do what got you here, or you’ll lose. That’s true for any team at any time, regardless of how much (or little) they’re getting paid.

So, the Brewers had the best overall record in MLB this past year. They beat the Dodgers six times and lost none. That had Brewers fans optimistic that this may finally be the year the Brewers go back to the World Series (the team hasn’t been there since 1982; I was very young then but still a huge fan and did attend a World Series game), even though the playoffs can be a “whole different animal.”

But it appears our optimism was misplaced. The Dodgers have steamrolled over the Brewers, and with the exception of game one (where the Brewers had loaded the bases in the ninth inning, only not to score the tying run), they have dominated every game they’ve been in.

Bluntly, the Dodgers have looked like the champions they are and have been for many years. The Brewers batters have looked more like chumps than champs, though most of the pitchers have been excellent and have done exactly what they’ve needed to do to give the slumping Brewers hitters a chance to tie or win the games.

I hate to write words like that, mind you. These guys try hard, and I know no professional athlete wants to end their season in a huge slump. No one wants to have a season that started with “Win one for Ueck!” (Bob Uecker, our longtime radio announcer, also a comedian and TV actor, passed away at the beginning of 2025) end in such ignominity.

But the facts don’t lie.

Now, if I were a sports psychologist, I’d tell the Brewers hitters one thing, and the Brewers pitchers another, but it would amount to the same thing. “Control what you can control” is the overall message, but I’d say to the pitchers that they did everything they could and controlled what they definitely could control. But the pitchers can’t bat for the hitters (with the exception of someone like Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers superstar, pitchers no longer bat), and they can’t control those at-bats or what the hitters do whatsoever. I’d tell the hitters that all they can control is how they approach the at-bat. (Some of the players have had long at-bats that have helped to tire the pitcher out over time, and those are considered successful at-bats or at least not failures even if they don’t result in a hit or walk.) Are they going up there confident in their abilities, confident in what they’ve shown all year long? Or are they going up there expecting to be beaten? (The latter is almost impossible for a professional athlete, mind. You don’t go into that field if you are that defeatist because the odds are very long to get to “the show,” as MLB is called, at all.)

See, if you put it that way, the athlete knows he’s doing his best. (No women, not even female umps, yet in MLB, though there are some female executives and coaches.) He can focus on the process of hitting, rather than dwell on the outcomes they’ve seen. Every day is a new day, and providing you’ve maximized your odds and done what you can to play your best, you have nothing to apologize for.

Anyway, the fact is that the Brewers must now win four games in a row against a Dodgers team that suddenly seems like the best team ever (AKA the 1927 New York Yankees, which featured both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, among other superstars). This seems like too big of a bridge to cross, at least from what I’ve seen out of the Brewers in this series. Yet, I still have hope that the Brewers can win at least one game, so their fans won’t feel awful, and so they, themselves, won’t feel awful.

Last year, I said to my friends and family that I felt the wrong team went on in the playoffs when the New York Mets won against the Brewers (a last-ditch homer by Pete Alonso, the slugging first baseman of the Mets, was the killing blow). This time, I can’t say that, because the Brewers have simply not been on the same level as the Dodgers during this series.

I will note, for the record, that there have been two teams in the 2000s that have forced a Game 7 after starting a seven-game series down three games to none. Those teams were the 2004 Boston Red Sox, who won Game 7 and advanced to the World Series, and the 2020 Houston Astros, who battled back from that three-game deficit but lost in the decisive Game 7. I will also note for the record that my favorite ever team, the 1982 Brewers, were down two games to none against the then-California Angels in a five-game series and won the final three games to advance to the World Series that year. (The Brewers lost. But they played hard and well and the city of Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin celebrated them then and continues to appreciate them now. They were the equivalent of this year’s “Average Joes” in having a blue-collar, anything for the team outlook.)

So, it is theoretically possible that the Brewers can still win a game or two and make things feel less awful for themselves and their fans. It’s even theoretically possible that they can still advance to the World Series…but if they’re going to do that, they need to win later today. And as big of a fan as I am, I can’t be sure of that.

Still. The Brewers should focus on winning game 4. Do that, and then you can focus on winning game 5.

I hope they can do that. I’d feel a whole lot better about things if they did, even if they still lose this series and even if the Dodgers still advance to the World Series.

My reasoning for that is simple. The rallying cry “Win it for Ueck!” won’t work next year. So if they really do want to win it for Bob Uecker, the time is now.