Brew Crew in town

I've come to the realization that I don't really like any of the other teams in our division. It's not really anything personal, it's probably the whole familiarity breeds contempt thing. I dislike LaRussa and everything associated with him and that means the Cardinals, the Astros have freaking ugly uniforms and Roger Clemens pitches for them, the Reds delievered me my first awful baseball memory, the 1990 NLCS (before that it was all roses as far as I can remember), and some part of me can never forgive them for that, and the Cubs are, well, the Cubs. The Brewers are something different, though. They haven't always been in our division and once they joined they were our brothers in ineptitude for a lot of years. Then in 2005 they finished .500 with a promising young team. They haven't quite fulfilled expectations this year, but good young teams often take a step back before they can surge forward. My dislike for them springs more from jealousy than anything.

Tonight is a good example of that. Our starting pitcher is one of their castoffs. Our starting right fielder is a guy they had the sense to get rid of years ago. Interestingly enough, our starting left fielder is not Jason Bay. He's not in center either. I don't actually have a huge problem with this, it might not be a bad thing to get him some rest here and there. A consecutive games played streak is pretty useless as I don't really see anyone touching Cal's record. I couldn't understand Tracy's logic that guys like Castillo and Sanchez need days off seemingly once a week, but that Bay never needs one off because he played every day last year. Of course, with Victor Santos on the mound we'll be needing all the offense we can get. The Brewers absolutely need to win this series to keep any semblence of hope that they're still in the Wild Card race (currently 5.5 back of the Reds). The Pirates need to win this series to keep me from writing very nasty and sarcastic things about them. I'd say it's a push.