There is less than a month until football season. Fantasy football drafts are in full swing, and nonsense headlines flood the likes of ESPN and CBS Sports.
Before long, it will be a little chilly in the mornings and evenings, and we'll have playoff baseball and the NFL season in full swing. This is also known as my favorite time on the sports calendar.
Today:
- One more reason to wonder if the red-hot Milwaukee Brewers are a team of destiny
- A sad fact for the St. Louis Cardinals and their fans
- What happened to the Dodgers?
Maybe this explains all these winning streaks
The Milwaukee Brewers keep winning. We all keep marveling at their success and posing ideas and theories about how they are doing it.
Some explanations are simple. Example: they are pitching really well.
Some explanations are fun. Example: they are getting key contributions from unexpected players, journeymen and cast-offs from other teams and the like.
And some explanations are cosmic. Example: one fan recently attributed this incredible run to "Uecker magic."
Bob Uecker, Milwaukee's longtime and beloved play-by-play radio announcer, passed away last year at age 90. He called games right until the end, and he brought joy to generations of baseball fans.
It is certainly a nice thought that there would be something in the stars for the Brew Crew the year after the franchise and their community lost Uecker. Here's how fan Frank Vitucci described it to MLB.com:
“Just because he bled Brewers baseball,” Vitucci said. “For this to be happening the year after he passes, it’s just karma, if you believe in that sort of thing. This has to be the year that it would happen, right?”
Uecker was known as "Mr. Baseball." He embodied the sport in so many ways. Besides the joy and beauty that could be observed, Uecker also spoke to the difficulty and unpredictability of the game.
He did so with his signature sense of humor. Truly, I doubt anyone will ever be funnier about baseball than Uecker was. For example:
"I hit a homer off Gaylord Perry, and he said it was the worst day of his life. Not his baseball life, but his whole life.” - Bob Uecker
Baseball is hard. Sometimes it goes your way. Most times it doesn't. Uecker was funny about so many aspects of the national pastime, but there was a lot of humanity in the way that he joked about these aspects of the game he loved.
Because baseball is so hard, it won't go your way most of the time. When it doesn't, you might as well shrug and laugh about it.
Back to these Milwaukee Brewers and their scorching play as the 2025 season barrels towards the fall. Maybe they are a team of destiny. Maybe it is meant to be for the Brew Crew. Maybe that will be the "Uecker magic."
But maybe the Brewers will come up short, victims of a series of events in the cruel randomness that is baseball. Maybe the team and their fans will be left to find the humor and joy in the season anyway.
Maybe that will end up being the "Uecker magic."
The poor Cardinals
Oh, how the turntables...
So far in 2025 (and for many years at this point), it has been the Colorado Rockies who are the butt of many jokes. They deserve it.
Many of those jokes, in reference to the team or their fans, will end with some version of this sentiment: "the poor Rockies."
And while I hesitate to make assumptions about the deliverer of these jokes, I would venture a guess that it is often the self-serious fans of legacy baseball franchises.
So, what do we say about the team that lost two series to those same Rockies in the last month.? Because that's what the St. Louis Cardinals just did.
The Cardinals have a losing record against the Rockies this season.
For most bad teams in a given baseball season, it is still the case that they can beat a good team on any night. It happens. It is part of the uniqueness of each game and each series over the course of a long season.
In those cases, there isn't necessarily shame or panic warranted for the good baseball team that loses to the bad baseball team.
The 2025 Rockies are a special case. Good teams mostly beat them up. The most extreme example was when the Toronto Blue Jays swept the Rockies last month, outscoring them 45-6 in three games.
There's at least some shame in losing to these Rockies.
If you are a good team, or even an average one, you have no business dropping one three-game set to the Rockies. You really have no business losing two separate series to them.
The poor Cardinals.
The second-place Dodgers
It happened kind of quietly, and of course it might not last, but the Dodgers are in the middle of something like a free fall. And they are no longer in first place.
Put another way: "The Dodgers Have Face-Planted." That's how Jay Jaffe described it, and his article had an interesting number:
"The Dodgers, who had a 98.2% chance of winning the division as of July 3, have dropped to a season-low 61.9%, while the Padres’ odds have improved from a minuscule 0.6% to a season-high 38%."
Granted, the Dodgers and Padres face off in a three-game series this weekend in Los Angeles. Come Monday, the Dodgers might be back in first place with a two-game lead.
But it's still pretty surprising and fun that this division winner has been called into question, and we're in the second half of August. Because I doubt I was alone in thinking that it was already settled and had been for a while.
Odds and ends
- Speaking of that series between the Blue Jays and the Rockies, it yielded one of my favorite headlines ever. Courtesy of the Colorado Rockies team page (MLB.com):
- Speaking of Bob Uecker, an article that counts down some of his funniest quotes is always good for a little shot of joy. I enjoyed this one (JokerMag).
- Speaking of the Dodgers and Padres and their key NL West battle this weekend, here's a preview (CBS Sports).
And speaking of the Rockies beating the Cardinals, here are some video highlights of Colorado's second series win. If you're a fan of the Rockies like I am, you take the little wins when you get them.
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