As the Sox make their first trip to National League shores, already the hand-wringing begins around the baseballsphere about the flaws of interleague play and the stupidity of these new, forced rivalries. Some arguments are more well-thought out than others; some reek more of fear and desperation; most tend to simply overvalue the vision needed to call for a double-switch.
And perhaps it’s true that some matchups are less compelling than others. Nationals-Rays, for example, or Twins-Cubs.
(Side note: Twins-Cubs might be the biggest middle finger ever extended to Chicago baseball. On one hand, the Twins are in possibly the best position of anyone to laugh at the Cubs, having taken Best Catcher in the Game Joe Mauer over quasi-retired all-time simulated game wins leader Mark “Glass” Prior. On the other hand, if you’re a Sox fan, which would you rather see win? Probably either, so long as it takes 30 innings to decide and some key player suffers such exhaustion they have to miss the rest of the season. Not hurt, mind you, just tired; wishing for pain is tacky. Wishing for ultimate defeat, however, is nothing short of civic duty.)
But then you get something like Sox-Brewers which, in some ways, is as awesome an event as could be. Not an awesome matchup, as the Brew Crew will probably mop the floor with the Good Guys, but mostly unrivaled as a singular happening.
As you may recall, the Brewers and Sox inexplicably haven’t squared off since 2001, a three-game set in Milwaukee the Sox swept behind the stellar pitching trio of Rocky Biddle, James Baldwin and David Wells, three names which should give you some indication not just of how long ago that really was, but also how much the Brewers really stunk in the early part of this decade.
Think about that for a second. For eight years, Sox fans have had more sports-related reasons to go to Houston, San Diego, Atlanta, Montreal and Pittsburgh than to a major metropolitan area a mere 90 miles to the north. Those of us old enough might remember when the Brewers were an American League team and what a neat local rivalry we had in Sox-Brewers (Tony Phillips, anyone?); those too young might conversely see Milwaukee as the great unconquered North, the local province of road trips from any of the faceless frat bars along Lincoln or Clark treated by the casual fan of the other Chicago team no differently than they would a bus ride to see the Dave Matthews Band.
To Sox and Brewer fans alike, this weekend’s series offers either a memory or an experience. To the Brewers front office, a few much-needed sellouts. To ardent supporters of the National League, it’s a chance to laugh at an American League team reduced to watching their pitcher go 0-for-2 at the place instead of watching a position player do the same, until finally the American League manager chooses a substitute bat, as though the skipper wanted to “designate” a “hitter” in place of their “pitcher.”
What an obviously horrible concept.