Friday morning with the stock market plunging and other world events not nearly as uplifting as the recent baseball World Series, I was flipping through the TV channels and came upon the parade for the winning team. Wanting to ditch the negative and savor a few moments of pure joy I paused to watch. Team members and staff in open buses or trucks paraded down Wisconsin Avenue before thousands of happy fans joyously waving their beautiful Tiffany-designed World Series trophy.
The Milwaukee Brewers had secured a legendary milestone this week by defeating the Tampa Bay Rays to win the first World Series in their 57-year history. The team with the best record in baseball this year, winning 103 of 162 games during the season, kept their hot streak alive winning 11 more games across three rounds of playoffs while losing just 2 enroute to their World Series victory, 4 games to 1.
As the parade halted briefly out of the corner of my eye I spotted a brief flash of what looked like the back end of a Lincoln convertible. Sure enough, Brewers’ owner Mark Attanasio and his wife Debbie in a gorgeous black ’60s-era Lincoln convertible were leading it all in grand style.
Their Lincoln, reportedly owned by famed Lincoln parts supplier and guru John Brewer, (no pun intended) set the tone for a day of glittering firsts. What better way to get things rolling than with a legendary example of Detroit iron?
Although the Brewers have been one of baseball’s best teams lately reaching the playoffs in 8 of the last 9 seasons, they last played in the World Series in 1982 but lost 4 games to 3 against the St. Louis Cardinals when the Brewers were still a part of the American League. In 1998 baseball’s league structures were realigned and Milwaukee became a part of the National League’s Central Division, which ironically also includes the Cardinals, as well as the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Along with the classic Lincoln, the Brewers featured their own icons—baseball Hall-of-Famers Robin Yount, Rollie Fingers and Ted Simmons—who rode in their own open vehicles during the parade. Yount played both shortstop and the outfield in his 20-year career with the team from 1974-1993. Although the city graciously sponsored a parade for the team when they lost in 1982, Yount admitted this year’s event healed a sore sport that had existed ever since that painful defeat.
The spirit of another famous baseball legend Bob Uecker, who passed away last year, also hovered over the team both literally and figuratively throughout the playoffs and the parade.
A huge mural of him looked down on players, staff and fans. Uecker played two seasons for the Milwaukee Braves and six years as a big leaguer overall, but is much more renowned for hs 51 years as a Brewers broadcaster and his comedic style as an actor in such productions as the 1989 classic Major League. In the famous film Uecker’s announcer character Harry Doyle calls a pitch two feet off home plate as “just a bit outside!” a phrase that has lived on over the years and is invoked after nearly every extremely wild pitch is thrown nowadays.
Today the moment of a lifetime was shared by current and past Brewers team members, staff, a classic Lincoln, and just plain folks, another reminder of how sports transcend differences and victory unites all. Enjoy it Mailwaukee. You have waited a long time to celebrate!
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