One for the Record Books

It was a Sunday.  A lot of the details around that are fuzzy, or speculative.  But I remember it was on a Sunday.  And I was hungover, so I didn't watch the game at the beginning.  Day games at Miller Park were always somewhat derided, hitters would complain about shadows and the ability to pick up the ball coming out of the pitcher's hand as the light source shifted became increasingly difficult.

Sure, that was probably true but that pitch was always difficult to hit.  It's what got him drafted, it's what won him the gold.  But this time, I remember it being a Sunday, and I did not feel like watching the Brewers lose to the Braves for a third game in a row.

Memory is such a strange thing, the details we pick up and hold, the moments we believe we'll remember forever.  What actually stays with you past the initial moment is rarely what we wish it would be. 

I remember it was a Sunday, and I remember I was hungover.  And as the afternoon progressed you started hearing about the Brewer game, like something special was happening.  In those days that was a rare thing, a special moment for the Milwaukee Brewers.  The team was on the downslide, and had been for a number of years.  They hadn't put together a competitive baseball team in 12 years, and the fan base was still in recovery from, unquestionably, the worst branding in the organization's young history (teal was big back then, but still).

It was early and hope still abounded in the season.  Fresh off loss totals of 94-106-94, you really just wanted to enjoy baseball for a while before you were reminded that this team just wasn't very good, and wasn't going to be good. For. A. While.

The timeline would've placed me in the Wellers Dorm, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, likely just before moving back home for the summer or sometime during final exams.  Hence the hangover.  I wasn't the greatest student in the world, and you didn't have finals on Sundays back then.  Disregard that I wouldn't be 21 for another two months.  I was definitely hungover.

Then, like a cannon shot exploding, Ben Sheets did what? He struck out how many?



That pitch was always filthy.  That curveball was something else, and on May 16, 2004 it looked like the Atlanta Braves might as well have been using dixie cups to bail out a sinking ship. They were not going to have a good day.

I'll spare you the breakdown, suffice to say that the Fastball/Curveball combo stifled the Braves - who would go on to win 96 games that year.  A lineup that featured Andruw Jones, Adam LaRoche, J.D. Drew and a pinch-hit (strikeout) by future Hall-of-Famer Chipper Jones struck out 18 times, a Milwaukee franchise record that still stands today.

I saw the end of the game, and I thought that was pretty cool.  This Ben Sheets guy might be pretty good.

I look back now and say - this is where the switch flipped.  The Brewers hadn't had a winning season since 1992.  Including the 2004 season that made 12 straight losing seasons.  Since then?  The Brewer's have had only five losing seasons, out of a possible 19 (not counting the COVID year).  This is unprecedented in the realm of being a Brewer fan.  This 18-strikeout game was a harbinger.  A sign of better times to come.

This singular performance was also history, history the likes of which we may never see again.  Since Sheets set down 18 Braves on that Sunday in May, only two times have we seen a pitcher match or exceed that number of strikeouts in a single game.  Corey Kluber in 2015, and Max Scherzer in 2016.  Starting pitchers are dying, and when everyone is throwing the ball 102 mph, they aren't lasting very long.  Pitching is changing, no more 300 game winners, no more 18 strikeout games.

You could look at it as the penultimate performance of the greatest season ever by a Milwaukee pitcher, ever.  Sheets would set the single season franchise record for strikeouts with 264, his WAR of 7.2 was higher than Corbin Burnes the year he won the Cy Young award (5.2), his ERA was Milwaukee top five at 2.70 and he did this all while walking only 32 batters across 237 innings pitched.  By comparison, Burnes walked 34 in his Cy Young his season, while pitching 70 less innings.

I remember that it was a Sunday, and I was hungover. But when that fog faded, and I saw that final strikeout, it was fun to be a Brewer fan again.

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