Brewers’ mediocre play leading Uecker to drink again

MILWAUKEE, WI — Entering the season, Milwaukee Brewers fans had reason to be optimistic about their team’s chances to win a division title in 2008. After all, the Brew Crew came within two games of winning the NL Central a year ago, and features a wealth of returning offensive talent that was instrumental in producing the franchise’s first winning season in fifteen years.

Unfortunately, the team that exceeded so many expectations before wearing down during the home stretch in 2007 seems to have carried over its lackluster ways into the early stages of this season. And though it’s still too early to be mulling playoff scenarios, it appears the Brewers’ lukewarm start has created an all too familiar sense of pessimism that has overtaken an already exasperated fan base and forced one of the franchise’s most recognizable figures – and voices – to revert back to old habits.

“It has been a long time since I’ve seen Bob this happy and this shit-faced. To be honest, I missed that Bob,” Brewers radio personality Jim Powell said of his broadcast partner, Bob Uecker. “For nearly thirty-five years, he made a name for himself as the slurring, incoherent voice of a Brewers baseball team that was the joke of the league. In my opinion, I think you would have to be drunk to endure twenty straight losing seasons, or whatever it is.”

Powell says Uecker’s legendary propensity for alcohol inexplicably stopped last season, when the Brewers – riding a rare and invigorating infusion of young talent – showed signs of life for the first time in decades, and narrowly missed qualifying for the playoffs for the first time in 25 years.

“I was worried there for a while, when the Brewers were winning last season and entered the hunt for the division title. The whole success thing threw Bob for a loop. He was caught off guard, and I think that’s why he stopped drinking,” explains Powell, who has been Uecker’s partner since 1996. “But it’s nice to see Bob return back to his former drunken self, now that the team is losing again. He’s back to being Harry Doyle.”

Uecker played the role of zany, oft-inebriated Indians announcer Harry Doyle in the popular Major League movies in the late 80’s and early 90’s. It is rumored that the height of the Brewers’ futility combined with Uecker’s corresponding drinking habits spawned the idea for the now-cult classic comedy.

Now, with Milwaukee unlikely to repeat last season’s success in the foreseeable future, Powell can breathe a sigh of relief… and Uecker can continue to be the Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Brewers fans have come to adore. And that means Uecker doing what he does best.

“A sober, tense Bob Uecker means that we all suffer. Now he can simply relax, kick back and enjoy his Jack Daniels on ice, and we can once again benefit from his extensive baseball genius,” Powell told SSNN. “He didn’t earn a spot in Cooperstown overnight – it took years; no, decades… I mean, generations of losing baseball to turn Bob into the intoxicated iconic figure he is today. After last year’s scare, I am pleased to say that that man has returned – everything is as it should be, now that the Brewers are struggling again.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!