(This would have been more timely had I gotten my act together last night, but, tough cookies.)

The typical Brewers fan may not recall 6/4/03 as a momentous date, but to me, it's what signified the rebirth of my favorite team.

Coming off an atrocious 106 loss season, the team finally hired a man hereto fore known as our savior Doug Melvin.  Unlike his predecessors (Sal Bando, Dean Taylor), Melvin actually was a real live and successful general manager with a few division titles to his credit.  He knew how to build a team, he know how to find players.  And, near and dear to my heart, he knew how to recognize a bad investment.

Over the winter of 2002/2003, Melvin made some minor moves (setting in motion the red paper clip project with Scott Podsednik), but to the casual fan it was the same old deal, just without signing the bloated underwhelming free agent.  Melvin had a plan, and he knew the plan would take a while, but what he didn't know were the clowns standing in his way.

Jeffrey Hammonds had signed prior to the 2001 season for three years and $22 million.  Everyone except Taylor thought that was a bad deal: an injury prone 29 year old outfielder coming off one career season in Colorado.  He had been a serviceable player throughout his career when healthy, and the only thing I knew about him was that I had about 15 of his rookie cards.  But still, this was the team's savior in the first season of Miller Park?  Hammonds blessed the team with 49 games in 2001 and a .247/.314/.425 line.  In 2002 he patched himself up to appear in 128 games and a stellar .257/.332/.397 line to lead the Brewers to a 56-106 record.

I'm certain the Brewers ownership hoped that he would turn it around in this 2003 contract year (at that point he had the reputation of playing well when it was in his best interests), but that wasn't the case and Melvin, the new guy, wasn't having any of it.  Still riddled with injuries, Melvin fired Hammonds on June 4, 2003 even though he was being paid $8.2 million that season.

This was quite a bold move for Melvin to do being that it was two months into the season for a small market team, but it was something that had to be done.  Hammonds' last game with the Brewers was actually April 14, 2003.  But it was relieving for me, for too long the team had put up with their poor decisions and the new management put an end to that (Yost isn't included in that because he still refuses to play by any sane person's rule).  In fact, the day prior to Hammonds' official release, with the second pick of the draft the Brewers selected a second baseman named Rickie Weeks.

So, that was the day when I started paying more attention to the team.  It's still been somewhat painful, but the team is ascending in (probably) the way that Melvin, Ash, and the rest envisioned it to happen (well, perhaps a little slower than they wanted).  But it was a great first step in restoring fans' faith in the organization, which could only be topped by the ownership change and (hopefully) some kind of hardware this season.

(Also of note: The Brewers on 5/27/03 made the deal of the century by getting rid of Alex Sanchez for Noochie Varner)

(Sources: terrible archive at JSonline.com, Baseball Reference, Retrosheet, my own tepid memory, Photoshop by me)