Great things happened yesterday for the Milwaukee Brewers franchise. The first and most important is they effectively erased a streak that had kept the Brewers irrelevant for their entire life in the NL and since they last knocked on the post season door thirteen years ago. They reached the 81 win mark which guarantees their first non-losing season since Phil Garner lead the team to 92 wins in 1992. 1993 saw the depature of Paul Molitor and Chris Bosio, would be the last season of Robin Yount's historical career, and was the first in a terribly long line of disappointing seasons.
Franchise players Geoff Jenkins, and Ben Sheets, career Brewers with the team since 1998 and 2001 respectively, will celebrate an historic season where the baseball attitude and ownership in Milwaukee has changed. This team is no longer striving for mediocrity. They aren't playing for respectability. Those days left with the old ownership and slashed payrolls. This team is looking forward, a .500 season is the base upon which they will build.
Rookie Brewers J.J. Hardy, Rickie Weeks, Prince Fielder, Corey Hart, Nelson Cruz, Dana Eveland, and Jose Capellan are starting an era of baseball in Milwaukee by having an immediate impact in the record books. They'll hopefully be Brewers for a long time and never experience what Jenkins and Sheets went through in the early aughts. They'll hear stories about how bad it was in 2002 finishing with the worst record in the NL (only one win better than the Detroit Tigers), finishing over a quarter of a season out of first place, and even behind the lowly Cubs. But they'll only be stories.