MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Brewers fans offer a supernatural explanation for their team’s surprising surge to the top of the major league standings.
And they believe it can continue carrying them all the way through October as the Brewers seek to win their first World Series title.
“It’s Uecker magic,” said Bonnie Bruhn, a 79-year-old Brewers fan from the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, Wisconsin.
As the Brewers prepare to honor Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Uecker, fans are hoping the team can pay tribute to him by making the deep playoff run that has eluded this franchise lately.
Uecker, who died Jan. 16 at age 90 after fighting small cell lung cancer, had broadcast Brewers games for 54 years. He remained loyal to his hometown team even after his chats with Johnny Carson and appearances in beer commercials and the “Major League” movies made him a national celebrity.
The Brewers are holding a celebration of life for the man nicknamed “Mr. Baseball” before their afternoon game with the San Francisco Giants. The pregame ceremony will be hosted by Bob Costas, Uecker’s longtime broadcast partner on NBC national telecasts.
There already has been plenty for Brewers fans to celebrate this season, as they own the best record in the major leagues and hold a seven-game lead over the Chicago Cubs in the NL Central.
Milwaukee didn’t send a single position player to the All-Star Game, yet the Brewers are ranked second in the majors in runs scored thanks to a lineup with a tenacious approach that has manager Pat Murphy comparing his players to woodpeckers because they “keep pecking away.”
Rookie third baseman Caleb Durbin used a different comparison this week.
“It feels like we’re sharks out there,” Durbin said. “We smell blood. Once we get runners on and start scraping those first couple runs across, we want that big inning.”
The Brewers (80-48) could go just .500 the rest of the season and would still end up with the best record in franchise history. They were 25-28 and 6 ½ games behind the Cubs on May 24, but they’re 55-20 since.
That surge includes a franchise-record 14-game winning streak that had some strange coincidences.
Milwaukee scored 12 runs in its 12th straight win. The Brewers extended the streak to 13 when Christian Yelich used a special Uecker-themed bat in a game for the first time and homered twice in a victory over Cincinnati. The Brewers’ 14th straight win featured a go-ahead homer in the 11th inning from light-hitting utilityman Andruw Monasterio, who happens to wear No. 14.
Bruhn noted a couple of those examples as she talked Brewers baseball while waiting in line to get her free hamburger from George Webb, a local fast-food chain that gives away burgers whenever Milwaukee wins at least 12 straight games. Bruhn also explained just how much faith she has in this year’s team.
After the Brewers’ last 12-game winning streak in 2018, Bruhn said she got her free burger from George Webb but kept it in the freezer “in a little baggie just to remind us it would happen again.”
“‘Til a week ago we threw them away, because we knew that we were going to get fresh hamburgers,” Bruhn said. “It was just a sign that we trusted the team to win 12 in a row.”
The question is whether this Brewers team can be trusted to carry over its regular-season success into the postseason.
Milwaukee has reached the playoffs six of the last seven years but hasn’t won a postseason series since reaching Game 7 of the NL Championship Series in 2018. The Brewers have lost 11 of their last 13 postseason games.
Yelich noted the random nature of postseason baseball and said the Brewers’ playoff history is pretty irrelevant because there’s so much turnover from year to year. Yelich and pitcher Brandon Woodruff are the only players remaining from that 2018 team.
“Each team has just as good of a chance as winning the World Series as losing in the first round every year,” Yelich said. “It’s baseball. You line out a few nights in a row, you’re out of the postseason. If you have some ground balls that find the holes in the right situation, you’re probably going to move on.”
Last year, the Brewers led the New York Mets 2-0 in the decisive third game of the NL Wild Card Series before two-time NL reliever of the year Devin Williams allowed four runs in the ninth inning.
Uecker closed what would end up being the final broadcast of his legendary career that night by saying, “That one has some sting on it,” before heading down to console the Brewers players in a silent locker room.
That message from Uecker still resonates with Brewers fans, who believe in their hearts he’s playing a role in this special season.
“Uecker is contributing, because after the last game, he said this one really stings,” Bruhn said. “He knew he wasn’t coming back for another game. So we’ve got to win for him.”
And they know the longtime broadcaster is still cheering on every victory.
“I’m glad they’re doing it for him after his passing,” said Steve Ebert, a 62-year-old Brewers fan from outside West Allis. “Bob’s looking down, going ‘Go Brew Crew, go.’”
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