MILWAUKEE — The Dodgers have been dead for a week. The sting has dissipated. The World Series starts Friday.
For the first time in three years, Los Angeles faces a Fall Classic with no rooting interest.
Might we suggest the Milwaukee Brewers?
No?
So maybe the sting has not dissipated, not after the Brewers so rudely swept the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. But did you see the thousands of Brewers fans that arose within Dodger Stadium to salute the newly crowned NL champions, sticking around long after the Dodgers fans had retreated to traffic jams in the parking lot?
“It’s a good time to be a Milwaukee Brewers fan, for sure,” NLCS MVP Jake Bauers said. “It’s always fun going into a road stadium, especially in a postseason environment, and coming out with a win and seeing how many people hang around after the game.”
The Brewers are L.A.’s team, at least for the next week.
Bauers and closer Trevor Megill played at Marina High in Huntington Beach. Team captain Christian Yelich played at Westlake High. The roster also features infielders Brice Turang (Corona Santiago) and Joey Ortiz (Garden Grove Pacifica), outfielder Garrett Mitchell (Orange Lutheran), and pitcher JoJo Romero (Oxnard).
It’s not just about a count of hometown players. The Brewers have left their mark on our area in a much more lasting way.
In 2018, Yelich and former Brewers teammates Ryan Braun (Granada Hills) and Mike Moustakas (Chatsworth) launched California Strong, a disaster relief fund born of twin tragedies: the mass shooting that killed 13 at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks and the Woolsey fire, which roared from Simi Valley to Malibu, burned almost 100,000 acres and forced nearly 300,000 people to evacuate their homes.
“Just trying to do some good,” Yelich said. “It was something we wanted to do to try to help out the community.”
Milwaukee designated hitter Christian Yelich takes part in a team workout on Thursday ahead of Game 1 of the World Series on Friday.
(John Fisher / Getty Images)
Former Rams quarterback Jared Goff pitched in, as did Mike Attanasio, a son of Brewers owner Mark Attanasio. The local YMCA agreed to administer the funds, and the group on occasion met at Mark Attanasio’s Los Angeles home, said Ronnie Stone, president of the Southeast Ventura County YMCA.
Nearly a decade later, California Strong is still going strong, providing more than $3.7 million in financial relief to families affected by disasters across the state, most recently the Altadena and Palisades fires last year.
“We’re not the biggest dollars. We’re the immediate dollars,” Stone said. “Getting money from the government and things like that always takes time. But we’re typically giving money out to people within a couple weeks, as opposed to months. So that was the cool thing about what we did.”
The money could pay for a couple nights at a hotel, or new clothes for work or school. Mark Attanasio recalled how his son delivered $700 to a family in need.
“They started crying,” he said. “Now they could get a computer. It’s easy to lose touch with the reality of what happens when you lose everything.
“When you see there’s people who care, that’s tangible, because I’m sure it feels hopeless.”
Attanasio, who made his fortune in money management in Los Angeles, serves on the board of LA28, Harvard-Westlake High and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. But few things attract attention like professional sports, and the curiosity of folks from a Milwaukee team helping out L.A. might have helped grow a Brewers fan base far from Wisconsin.
“I think, over the years, it did,” Attanasio said. “And frankly, over the years, because we crisscrossed with the Dodgers so much, more people know us in California than they would otherwise.”
The Dodgers, grrr. The sting really has not dissipated. We need a laugh.
For that, we turn this column over to Pat Murphy, the Brewers’ manager. In 1986, as the 28-year-old head coach at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, Murphy came across a man in a tan suit, standing on the side of the road beside a broken-down car.
“Heavyset guy,” Murphy said. “Didn’t recognize him.”
Cellphones had not yet been invented, but the coach offered the stranger a ride to his office, where he could call for assistance. The two men started talking baseball, and eventually Murphy asked the man in the tan suit what he did for a living.
“I work for the Dodgers,” the man said.
“What do you do?” Murphy said.
“I catch,” the man said.
He was Mike Scioscia, and this was the year after he finished ahead of Tony Gwynn and Fernando Valenzuela in the MVP voting.
“I feel like a total fool,” Murphy said. “I gave him a ride home that night and got his car fixed, and we became friends.”
L.A.’s team, with the LOL. Brewers in six.
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