Although the architecture for this blog indicates it remains dedicated to the New York Mets, we have changed the format for today to a blog dedicated to our new favorite team, the Milwaukee Brewers. See, we don’t wish to think about the Mets any longer, but we don’t mind thinking about some other baseball team, particularly a real good baseball team. Thus, you can now think of this site as Millie Helper, Millie, as in our affectionate name for Milwaukee, and Helper, as in we’d like to help our new favorite team get as far as they can. (And, yes, Millie Helper was a character on The Dick Van Dyke Show, portrayed by actress Ann Morgan Guilbert [1], an alumna of Solomon Juneau High School in Milwaukee, a fact we’re sure all Brewers fans like us already knew.)
[2]Today, we are all Millie — that’s short for Milwaukee — helpers.
Good news, fellow Millie Helpers — we won on Sunday [3]! Is that news? Don’t our Brewers always win? Sure seems like it, especially when we take on those Mets. Wow, those Mets, huh? Seems like not so long ago the Mets were a problem for us, specifically last October, but that was last year, and now they’re really quite the welcome sight on our schedule, or I suppose, the schedule of any team’s fans. Maybe not that of Mets fans, but they’d have to speak to that issue.
The Mets led in the series finale, 5-0, and if you hadn’t been watching the Brewers much, you might have thought a five-run deficit would be daunting. But not for our Millie! Our Brewers chopped and chipped away at that New York lead, and before you knew it, we were tied, 6-6. This was with our starting pitcher, Quinn Priester [4], lasting only four-and-a-third. Quinn gave up two home runs, one to Brett Baty, who I understand was once a top Met prospect, and one to Cedric Mullins, who hadn’t hit much since the Mets acquired him from Baltimore. Of course Quinn could relate to the Mets starter, Sean Manaea. Manaea went only four-plus innings, which is about what most Met starters top out at. Or so I think I read on the screen during Sunday’s game. I watched the Mets feed, and their announcers mentioned two things repeatedly:
1) Their starters, except for David Peterson, never last.
2) Our team, the Brewers, is really impressive.
I could have told them the second part.
Anyway, Quinn didn’t have it, but you know our Brew Crew, never out of it until we’re out of it, and against the Mets, we were never out of it during this entire series. There we were in the fourth, getting on the board via a William Contreras [5] leadoff home run, the poke that clued us in that this would be like any other day that ends in y, a day where coming up with a way to beat the Mets was inevitable. Later in the same inning, Joey Ortiz [6] — we call him Pal Joey — singled to left to bring in two more runs. We were trailing the Mets by two, but you knew it was only a matter of time.
The bullpens eventually took over, and I know I saw something about the Mets beefing up their pen (sort of like we Brewers fans beef up our tailgates when we’re not grilling brats), but Met pens seem to run out of ink no matter who’s in them. Witness the uncapping of Reed Garrett who gave up Contreras’s second homer of the day, this one with a man on. We couldn’t get to Brooks Raley or Tyler Rogers, but sure enough, come the eighth inning, when we were down, 6-5, we built a rally versus Ryan Helsley, who I have to admit I’m having a hard time not thinking of as a Cardinal, what with our frame of reference being the National League Central. Funny thing, I was watching the Mets’ postgame show on Saturday night (know thy enemy and all that), and a reporter asked Helsley to comment on Pete Alonso tying their franchise record for home runs, and I was thinking, why would Helsley have an opinion on that? Ask him about Stan Musial.
But I digress. Helsley came in and, before you knew it, our Brewers had a scoring threat that culminated in Pal Joey singling in the tying run. I’m not one for those constant gambling come-ons that have infiltrated baseball broadcasts, but I thought, man, I have to put down my brat and place a bet, because I know our Brewers are gonna win, whether it’s in the eighth, or ninth, or tenth.
As a fine, upstanding fan of a Midwestern-based baseball team, I try to think only positive thoughts, but when the bottom of the ninth began, the game still tied at six, I envisioned the game ending with a shot of Edwin Diaz walking forlornly off the mound. I mean I planned on enjoying however we won the game, but you didn’t have to be a Mets fan to have known that was coming. Diaz is a great closer, but he hasn’t closed anything since I don’t know when, because the Mets never take any leads into the ninth. I’ll bet even his jars of mustard are open for when he grills (that’s a little Midwestern tailgating humor there, of course). Unsurprisingly, one of our many fine Brewers, Isaac Collins [7], took Diaz over the right field fence, not far from where Pete Alonso did that thing last October that we don’t think about as Brewers fans anymore, because we’ve moved on from 2024. The final was our Millie Brewers 7, those New York Mets 6.
I really should have placed that bet. I knew it would come out like that. That’s what life as fan who doesn’t root for a team that has wrapped itself in predictable doom is like. I don’t have to tell you that if you love the Brewers the way we love the Brewers here at Millie Helper, but in case there are still any Mets fans reading, I thought you might like to know that baseball still has the ability to fill some people with joy these days.