Brewer weekend summed up by a 14 second piece of classic American cinema:
Like a lot of baseball/Brewer fans, I was pumped for the home opener last Friday. We knew it wasn’t going to be EXACTLY the same as any other year, I wasn’t going to be playing flip cup at 11am and making questionable decisions when offered a variety of shots, but still, the home opener at Miller Park is something to celebrate.
Then came the news that one Cardinal player had tested positive for COVID, followed by several others, and before you knew it, the weekend was cancelled. The St. Louis Cardinals: Ruining Brewer fan’s lives since forever. How baseball intends to make up these missed games as it relates to the standings, winning percentages, and playoff spots, is anyone’s guess.
But beyond just the games getting cancelled, it was a WILD weekend at Miller Park. After Saturday’s games were nixed, Lorenzo Cain decided to opt out of the season, and forgo his nearly 6 million dollar prorated salary. Hard to argue with him. He’s got a family of five, three young kids, and he’s made enough money in his career to be able to solidly step away for a season. But he was off to a hot start at the plate after a down year offensively last year, he’s a reigning Gold Glover in centerfield, and a leader in the locker room. Not an easy piece to replace.
About an hour after that, Ryan Braun went on the IL with an infected finger which led to a TON of bad jokes on Twitter, and a few hours after that, bench coach Pat Murphy suffered a heart attack during a team workout at Miller Park. SHEESH. Murphy is going to be okay, thankfully, but a weirder weekend of Brewer (non) baseball, I can’t remember.
So, we’re on to Home Opener 2.0, Electric Boogaloo tonight. The White Sox are in town for two, then the Brewers head to the south side of Chicago for two. My guess is they try to make up the missed Cardinal games with a flurry of double headers the next time they meet up in a three game series, but we are in a ‘one day at a time’ approach at this point. That next series is scheduled for September 14th which feels like it’s about 752 days away given the way things have gone so far for MLB.
PS: I will say this about the weekend in sports: The NBA is VERY palatable in a small setting with no fans. I think because of the camera angle, you never really see the fans at a normal NBA game anyway, unless the camera cuts to them. But with the way things are configured on the TV broadcast, and with the piped in crowd noise, I think visually it looked about as normal as any sport we’ve seen so far. I also thought the ‘Zoom Fans’ were a nice, unique way to get the fans involved on live streams:
Actually a great idea. It also doesn’t hurt that we’re back to a potential championship season for the Bucks, and their first two games were VERY entertaining. So far the NBA has done it’s restart the best. Baseball has had some avoidable and unavoidable hurdles, and the NFL appears to be hoping the whole thing goes away in the next three weeks.
