It was at a given time during the start-match media session on Saturday morning that the manager of the Chicago Cubs, Craig Counsell, easily cut questions about Wisconsin.
He was asked about the 13 -game Victories of Milwaukee Brewers victories, their jovial manager, Pat Murphy, And the divisional race that the brewers are fleeing now After the Cubs spent the first four months in first place. The way things were heading, Counsell could have feared answering questions about the cheese castle, Green Bay packers receive bodies And his favorite lunch location at Wisconsin DELLS.
“What were you expecting?” I asked him.
The native of Wisconsin who left his work in Milwaukee for the lively lights of Chicago saw his old team turning into a better history of baseball, While the cubs did things in the shape of small, The fall of nine return games in mid-August after a sensational start.
When asked if he could appreciate how “the brewers were” great “, Counsell was impassive:
“What is so great about this? I mean, they play well. They play very well. They haven’t lost since we played them.”
So, is it bored by the fact that brewers never lose?
“Well, the job is to try to win the division,” he replied. “This is the ultimate goal, and they really make it difficult. So, from this perspective, yes. We only have 13 chances of affecting it, right? ”
The Cubs, which went 4-4 against the Brewers in their first eight meetings, started a series of five games against them on Monday in Wrigley Field.
It could be a wake if the cubs do not wake up. They beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 3-1 on Saturday, while the Brewers again won dramatically, defeating the Cincinnati Reds 6-5 in 11 innings for their 14th consecutive franchise victory.
Counsell did not want to bury himself, because many cubs managers before him did it, saying something that would be used against him on sports radio, internet or the virtual Babillard of Brewers.
You couldn’t blame him for dodging questions, just as you couldn’t blame the media for asking.
Counsell was a teenager in Milwaukee when the Brewers ’87 won their first 13 games, establishing a franchise record that was tied on Friday In a crazy victory of 10-8 return against the Reds after following 8-1.
Le propriétaire de la chaîne de restaurants de George Webb avait promis de donner des hamburgers gratuits pendant une journée après 12 victoires consécutives des brasseurs, et finalement a fini par distribuer 168 192 cadeaux après que la séquence a été atteinte en avril 1987. Grâce à la séquence de cette année, qui a atteint 12 ans mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, mercredi, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, which reached this year’s sequence, which reached 12 years. The George Webb channel will do the same from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday In all 23 locations of the restaurant’s Wisconsin.
Counsell did not remember having obtained a free hamburger in 1987 when I asked him questions about his childhood memories. In truth, he said that he was more a fan of the burgers of Kopp ice cream, another basic food from Wisconsin.
“Honestly, I have never seen a George Webb,” said Counsell, referring to the restaurant, not to the person.
I had not seen George Webb either in 1987, when the Chicago Tribune sent me to Milwaukee to report on a story a month after the sequence of 13 consecutive victories. The Reverend Dominic Pelulus, a fan and priest of New York Yankees in a primary school in Franklin, Wisconsin, had promised his 200 free burgers students if the brewers lost 12 in a row.
With the sequence at 11 consecutive games, the Reverend Peluse declared before the match of May 20 against the White Sox, he was in a “frenzy state”, realizing how 200 hamburgers would cost him. The SOXs won 5-1 and the priest was forced to repay.
The owner of the Brewers, Bud Selig, who later became the MLB commissioner, was perplexed by the way a team could win 13 consecutive games in April, then lose 12 consecutive in May.
“26 weeks ago during the major leagues season,” said Selig that day at the County stadium. “There are times in these 26 weeks when you think you never lose, and times when you think you will never win. I never thought I would see them so early. It is not a human experience that I like to live.”
Advice can probably relate. Nor is it a human experience that he likes to live. Watching the 2025 brewers looks unstoppable while his cubs have trouble scoring races were more difficult to digest than moldy cheese.
Everything that the Brewers touches seems to be transformed into gold, as evidenced by the game of the former first goal player by Sox Andrew Vaughn, which was acquired for the Aaron Civale launcher on June 13 After Vaughn was demoted to Triple-A Charlotte three weeks earlier.
Entering Saturday, the Brewers were 27-4 (a percentage of victory of 0.871) since the beginnings of Vaughn on July 7 at the Dodger Stadium, where He hit a three -point circuit During his first At-Bat in a 9-1 victory against the Los Angeles Dodgers. When Vaughn was downgraded to Charlotte on May 24, the White Sox were 15-35, a percentage of victories of 0.300 and the first base player reached 0.189 with five circuits, 19 products produced and a .531 ops in 48 games.
“I had to understand what was going on and look at myself,” Vaughn told two Chicago journalists last month in Milwaukee. “I had to remove the ego. Baseball is our work, and if you do not produce, it sometimes happens. ”
SOX’s general manager, Chris Getz, rationalized the agreement by stressing that Vaughn became a free agent after 2026, saying: “When Vaughn is in his career as White Sox contractually, it was logical to seek ways to help our team currently find an arm.”
President Jerry Reinsdorf appreciated financial savings, without a doubt, while the director general of brewers Matt Arnold played on Vaughn and won Gros.
Including Saturday’s match at Cincinnati, Vaughn hit 0.343 with nine circuits, 35 products produced and a 1,051 OPS in 29 games. Its 54 points produced in total are five more than the 49 of Lenyn Sosa, which leads the SOX.
“You never know what a change of decor can do for you,” said Slugger Brewers Christian Yelich about Vaughn’s push. “He was a truly productive player in this league, and sometimes you manage to difficult departures in a season. I had a few in my career too.
“If you stay there constantly, it starts to turn. And it could be this change of landscape, enter a different environment, a different culture … You never really know. He has done a great job, he is a great guy and he adapts well to our group.”
Meanwhile, the Cubs will enter the confrontation against Brewers, such as the Decided Outsiders. They must first finish in the NL Wild-Card ranking to play at home in a series of joker cards at the best of the three and are shoulder to shoulder with the Padres de San Diego in the race for the seeded n ° 4.
“It’s the next goal, right?” Said Counsell. “The Wild-Card series is a series of three games for Seeds 3-6. You get the advantage of being at home if you are seeded. Otherwise, you are on the road. But a three-game series is a series of three games. We know what can happen in a three game series.
The story also tells us that a team can win 13 games in a row and lose 12 consecutive a month later.
You could look for it.
