Friday, October 07, 2011

"Who do you want to win, Mom?"

Tonight, as I walked the dog around the block, Bob Uecker's voice drifted from a radio in someone's garage as the Brewers took their time getting around to beating the Diamondbacks. I hear that voice and the roar of the buzzed Milwaukee crowd in the background and suddenly it's 1982 and I'm 8 years old again. I'm pretty sure I didn't know a lot about baseball then -- in fact, for some reason, my strongest memory is of the cutaway shots on TV to Robin Yount's wife, Michele, in the stands and her fantastic Charlie's Angels-like hair. But I knew Milwaukee's magical run to the World Series meant something to everyone around me, and I absorbed it into my DNA. So tonight, I could hardly stand to watch ... Will they? Can they?

Gavin is not much younger than I was three decades ago when the state was transfixed by the Brew Crew. And it seems since he started kindergarten that his interest in sports teams and who we're rooting has suddenly come into sharp focus. This is an amazing time to be a Wisconsin sports fan; he is blissfully unaware of how lucky we are. Don remembers crying as a kid when the Pittsburgh Steelers lost. Here's hoping we don't see any tears this fall.