My previous job was as a bartender at a family-friendly brewery here in Milwaukee. Ahead of a Dodgers series, I was having some fun with a fan who was in town for the game. After serving him his beer and telling him I’d give him the L.A. discount and only charge him $15, my next customers were a dad and his son—both Brewers fans. The kid couldn’t have been older than 11 years old. The dad proceeded to tell me that regardless of how this regular season series went, we would lose to the Dodgers in the playoffs. He told me that I could continue to make believe, but “that’s just the way it is.”
After publicly ridiculing him and potentially putting my job and the aforementioned “family-friendly” title of the brewery in jeopardy, I took some time to reflect on this interaction and how this sort of sentiment has become so common among Wisconsin sports fans.
2025
I grew up in a town called Frederick, Maryland. My mom is from Wisconsin, and my dad from New York. Neither cared about baseball, so I casually followed the Orioles as I got into my early twenties, until I moved to Milwaukee in 2013 and started rooting for the home team. The Orioles, another small market team in a big money division, still have a soft spot in my heart.
I should also clarify that, because my mother is from Wisconsin, I have been a Packers fan all my life. I have sat through middle school classes with my Brett Favre jersey and received ridicule from Ravens and Commanders fans as a kid, and have endured heartbreak throughout the Rodgers years with my fellow Wisconsinites as an adult. Because of this, I would like to offer some sense of validation and say that these paranoid feelings of something bad about to happen are not baseless. I, like many of my fellow cheeseheads, wake up in cold sweats thinking about the NFC championship games in 2014 and in 2020. I cannot see a player in our secondary wear the number 20 and not have PTSD-like flashbacks.
As someone who was not raised in the Midwest, I think this instinct to prepare for the worst is probably rooted in the humble, frugal nature of Wisconsinites. I’m sure that it is some sort of defense mechanism deployed so that you don’t have to invest too much of your emotions. It’s a way to hedge your bet, so you don’t have to go “all in” emotionally and get burned if things don’t turn out your way. Just the other day, moments after telling my coworker I was at the incredible Game 2 comeback walkoff win, she said, “something tells me they’re going to let me down.” Twelve hours hadn’t passed, the Brewers were up 2-0 in the series, and she was already taking her chips off the table.
Now, sports fans, please stay with me as I attempt to address the “woo-woo” nature of this sort of belief system. I have played sports at a high level and watched sports all my life. What you begin to understand is that any game is a game of momentum. When 40,000 fans are rallying behind their team, the players feel that. I am sure that Jackson Chourio felt that as he walked off the Padres in Game 2. This, of course, is one reason why home field advantage is so critical. So what happens when 40,000 fans are sitting in the stands nervously waiting for something bad to happen? That nervous energy is not exempt from the phenomenon of momentum. If you think the team is going to lose, if you are expecting the worst and not rooting for the best, the players feel that, too.
Finally, what I should address is that thinking we might lose to the Dodgers is a somewhat “rational” response. For the non-sports fans who have made it this far, the Dodgers are the Evil Empire. They have a payroll of over $300 million, which is more than double that of the Brewers. That’s Death Star money. They can buy any star player they want, and they do. In this way, baseball is flawed. In this way, the Brewers are certainly underdogs.
The reason I was most upset with that IPA dad at the brewery was not because he didn’t believe, it was that he was letting his jaded attitude get in the way of every kid’s right to dream. All of the best stories are underdog stories, and I think every kid sees themself as an underdog. The dad had long ago given up hope, but somewhere that kid still believed in his team. He saw himself out on that field, getting a critical hit and winning the world series. His dad had succumbed to the pressures of the Evil Empire, but the son was piloting the X-wing that takes down the Death Star. (Forgive me, what I did not learn from my dad about baseball I learned about Star Wars.)
So, what I would like to ask of you all, of all the great fans who helped the Brewers to their best regular season ever and to their second straight NLCS, is to just this once, go all in. Suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment. Believe that this can happen, and that good things can come to Wisconsin sports fans. Do not let yourself be the jaded IPA dad denying his son every kid’s right to believe in magic. Tap into the unique childlike force that is believing your team can win it all.
For the superstitious, of whom there are many in Wisconsin, this is not me saying the Brewers are going to win it all. It’s only me saying, what do you have to gain by thinking they won’t?
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