The beginning of the end

Yep, today marks the first game of the last series of 2005. There's really only one point of interest in this series, Milwaukee has 80 wins and a baseball game has 162 games. For those of you keeping track at home, that means Milwaukee needs 1 win to assure that they won't finish below .500 this year, thus breaking stride with us on our dual spiral into futility, ending their streak at 12 years. That might be the final indignity of this stretch, which has already seen such indignities like the Marlins and Diamondbacks coming into existence and winning World Series' and teams like the Indians and Marlins building winners, disassembling them, and reassembling more winners while we couldn't scrap together one measly 81 win season. Hell, even the Royals had a winning record two years ago. The Devil Rays are miserable but they haven't existed long enough to match our streak. Oliver Perez, Kip Wells, and Zach Duke face off against Doug Davis, Tomo Ohka, and Rick Helling to attempt the streak to pull the Brew Crew back into obscurity with us. Then again, if Kip Wells and Oliver Perez win back to back games it might signal the Apocalypse, so maybe we should just let Milwaukee get that win (you know, because if the world ends that means we'll DEFINITELY never have another winning team as opposed to just PROBABLY never having another one).