Lisa Lucas and Erin Hoffman, by any definition, are what you would call super fans. They love their Milwaukee Brewers and have been fans for life. They even have a podcast called Brewers Babes where they just talk ball — everything from OPS, to tipping pitches, to the power of friendship.
They both say that this season for the Brewers has been magical, even for optimists of the team, like the two of them. They told WUWM's Jimmy Gutierrez what this season has meant to them. They also discussed the challenges they saw the Brewers overcome to end with the best record in all of baseball, and the best in the team's history.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Lisa Lucas: At the beginning of this season, there was not one pundit or baseball expert who picked the Milwaukee Brewers to win the division, let alone become the best team in the entire league.
Erin Hoffman: Over the last decade and especially in the last five years, we've seen the Brewers be consistently underrated by baseball fans and by baseball experts every year, despite their successes.
LL: Do you have "experts" in quotes there?
EH: I did put it in quotes. But, in the beginning of the season, there was a lot of up and down and we were missing some heavy hitters in Jackson Chourio and Andrew Vaughn. I remember a lot of panic around the time that the Wisco uniforms came out. We were like, this is a curse. These uniforms are cursing us. We're not doing well.
'And then things just started to click'
LL: There's so many games that do stand out. The Miz's Maddux game (a complete game shutout with fewer than 100 pitches) absolutely will remain in my memory and in my heart forever. I got to go to that game with my five-year-old son, who now has a hero for life.
EH: Going into that Dodger series, I definitely didn't have high hopes. I remember telling people, this feels unfair. They're going to have us play four games against the Dodgers? This feels like a setup at the end of a 17-game stretch. And then they kicked it off with a ninth inning rally in the very first game.
LL: One other moment that I'm going to remember forever again is [Luis] Lara's walk off. And not just for the hit, and not just because it was in the 10th inning, and not just because it was against the Cubs, but because of what Pat Murphy did for Luis Lara before that moment. He brought him over, he said, 'you got this.' He gave him a pat. And then the camera stayed on Luis Lara and you could see he just had the smile, like a huge, beautiful smile. And as soon as you saw that smile, you knew that the Brewers were going to win this game.
'He's going to do it for us'
EH: We didn't have a hot streak. We didn't have a big slump. We weren't a streaky team throughout the regular season. And I think that consistency is going to help grind us through the postseason at this point, because we're not relying on a hot streak. Instead, the guys are relying on their talents, their drive and their teamwork.
LL: And the other thing I think they're relying on is their new captain, Christian Yelich. He's only the third captain in the MLB. There's only two other teams that have a captain. We know how much Christian Yelich means to this team, to this city, to this state. [And if] Christian Yelich believes that they can win the World Series, that means that I believe they can win the World Series.
And I think if anybody is going to bring it home for us this postseason, it's going to be Christian Yelich. He's going to do it for us. He's going to do it for Milwaukee. He's going to do it for himself, for his teammates, and he's going to do it for Bob Uecker, who (was) one of his closest friends.
And now I'm getting emotional and...teary-eyed, thinking about this. Because if you grew up a Brewers fan, Bob Uecker means something really, really special to you. There would just be no more beautiful culmination to that friendship than for the captain, and the only captain of the Milwaukee Brewers, to win a World Series for Bob Uecker.
