Brewers fans in the area probably felt conflicted watching this autumn’s World Series. There was Ned Yost, the former Milwaukee manager who managed to get canned with two weeks remaining in the 2008 playoff push, leading the Kansas City Royals to their first Series in 29 years – while still making the sort of perplexing and occasionally infuriating decisions that led Brew Crew followers to wish him a good riddance. Next to him was Dale Sveum, his temporary replacement that September six seasons ago. Both are former Brewers ... like breakout star Lorenzo Cain and solid contributors Nori Aoki, and Alcides Escobar. These are the guys who got the Royals over the hump, while Milwaukee’s finest now notch a 32nd-straight season out of the Series.

We know who won that championship, but we feel like it was a successful year, even thought ultimate success evaded our team. 

At the same time, there was a familiarity to Kansas City’s pseudo-Cinderella run (I say “pseudo” since, while the Royals vanquished an epic playoff drought, their payroll actually broke into the middle-third of Major League Baseball). This was a plucky team from a small market that galvanized a city and went seven games against a well-run organization, a team that showed to the baseball world the unheralded size and loyalty of its fan base. Four of the games were in Missouri. And, the combination of all these factors may mean that, with the Series’ conclusion, the heartbreaking loss of this long-downtrodden team may get stored away as ... a win? Sound familiar?

There is an odd effect with Milwaukee Brewers history. The fact is that they lost the 1982 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals, their only appearance in the Fall Classic. No Series trophies sit in Brewers headquarters. Yet, you bring up 1982 to a Brewers fan, and you probably see a smile and hear a flurry of reminiscence of Robin, Molly, Vuke, and Stormin’ Gorman, a recounting of Cecil Cooper gesturing his line drive to fall fair for a hit, Ben Oglivie hitting another home run.

Your enduring memory may be County Stadium fans storming the field en masse at the end of Game 5 – which only put the True Blue Brew Crew up three games to two. Yes, fans flooded the field in a non-clinching World Series game. To them, that was like the title, knowing one-to-two games in enemy territory remained to finish the job. The team loaded up their powder blue road unis and traveled south to St. Louis. They never got the win.

That game may have been the peak moment of Brewers history. It felt like a championship, and since the franchise never got as close, the years have given a halcyon-esque effect. We know who won that championship, but we feel like it was a successful year, even thought ultimate success evaded our team. Perhaps decades of futility, some savvy front office marketing in the lean years and, lately, the team falling short of higher expectations, combine to make that distant juggernaut – remember, if Rollie Fingers does not suffer a season-ending injury, the Brewers probably win it all in ’82 – seem like the year everything went right, with a squad full of guys to whom we could relate. It was a bunch of mustached guys in a city known for beer playing blue-collar baseball.

This year’s bunch of (some) mustached guys in a city known for barbeque playing a different kind of blue-collar baseball will endear the Royals to their fans. Yes, they do have an actual World Series title in their history, and 1985 brings the same emotional sensation in K.C. as 1982 does in Wisconsin. However, that near-three-decade playoff pause created a dynamic in their playoff run that will resonate in the Plains like Harvey’s Wallbangers did in the Badger State.

I was too young to know what baseball was when the Brewers played in the Suds Series 32 years ago, yet even I feel that pull of “Remember when…” upon hearing or reading about that era. For me, that may be since many key figures – and that classic UW-Eau Claire student-designed logo – were still around a couple of years later when I first got into baseball. Or, perhaps I share the same explanation as other Brew Crew types: Try hard, and you will always be champions to us.