Brewers fever is coursing through Milwaukee as the team heads into game one of the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
One diehard Brewers fan in her 80s adopted the team when she moved to Milwaukee 55 years ago and has waited a long time for this moment.
Not everybody’s Buddha wears a vintage Brewers cap.
Well — not everyone has a bust of a Buddha — but Diane Buck has both.
Buck loves art, baseball and the Brewers.
"It is the sport and the team because baseball is basically a subtle game and you really have to pay attention to really understand what’s going on," Buck says.
When people say baseball is boring, Buck says, "Well it’s boring because you haven’t paid attention to what’s going on in the field."
Buck picked up her love for baseball from her father.
"I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and Portland has always had a Minor League [team] called the Portland Beavers and so in the 1940s and 50s, I would go sometimes with my father to baseball game on Sundays. So that was the beginning of my real interest in baseball," Buck says.
As a kid she played softball. "At that time girls did not play baseball – you played softball."
She continued to play for years.
"I would say I was a little better than average, not great," Buck says.
When life brought Buck to Milwaukee in 1969, "I had to transfer my interest in baseball here and I became a good fan," she says. "A good fan means that you go to some games and you follow them on the radio with Bob Uecker or watch them on television occasionally.
Buck stuck with the Brewers through thick and thin.
"The teams were not very good in some of the years that I was following them," she says.
In the meantime, Buck’s father followed the Brewers from afar.
"We always said that if we ever got to the World Series, David (Buck's husband) and I would buy him a ticket and get him out here to see it," Buck says.
That finally happened in 1982. The Brewers were facing the St. Louis Cardinals.
"And so that meant we had to get World Series tickets, and back then you couldn’t just get on the web and get your tickets. You had to go out to the stadium and get in a line and buy those tickets," Buck says.
She taught grade school art at the time and credits her self-made sign for its help getting her tickets.
"The sign said 'we’ll buy tickets – pay big,'" Buck says.
They scored three excellent seats for a whopping $200 per ticket.
"Very good seats, so we were happy to pay that much. But the really wonderful thing was that I was able to sell the sign for $5," Buck says.
What are her memories of the game?
"We lost – that’s what I remember of the game," Buck says.
Now the Brewers have another chance — their first in 44 years.
This weekend, Buck will slip on her jersey, borrow the cap from her Buddha and relish the World Series – this time from her apartment in a senior community on the east side.
She tried to buy a ticket — priced five times higher than the ones she purchased in 1982 — but by the time she pulled out her credit card to pay online, the opportunity had vanished.
Nevertheless, she’s especially eager to see if one of her favorite players — relief pitcher Abner Uribe — gets a chance to shine.
"He is so excited to be there. I think he’s probably about 20 years old, maybe 21 and when he throws the ball and he gets an out and the inning is over, sometimes he skips to the dugout and I think that is just remarkable, and that is why I like Abner so much," she says.
Buck predicts a happy ending for her team.
"I think that the Brewers are on a great roll and we will win – but we won’t sweep," Buck says.
She’s ready to wave her blue and yellow rally flag when that happens.
