Is This The Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?

Those are the lyrics to the start of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and they pretty much sum up the past several days.

STILL can't believe the Milwaukee Brewers won the freakin' World Series! Keep waiting to wake up from this dream, or come back from the parallel universe where this happened. (Nielson television ratings had 14.22 million viewers and the series averaged 11.83 million. Not bad for a pair of "small market" franchises.)

I'll admit, there were tears shed.

But it's real. World Series champs for the first time in the franchise's 56 year history -- well, 57 if you count the season they were still the Seattle Pilots. And only 44 years since the Robin Yount-led team got there as the American League Champions, only to waste a 3-1 lead going back to St. Louis.

It's only the second time in 69 years that the city of Milwaukee celebrated like this, going back to the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 (and they nearly had back-to-back titles, losing to the Yankees 4-3, blowing a 3-1).

So, how many of you saw this coming? The 103-win season, the sweep of the LA Dodgers in the playoffs on the way to a 4-1 World Series victory along with an 11-1 playoff run?

How about a show of hands. Come on, don't be shy....yeah, me neither. What a season for Manager Pat Murphy and his team of never-say-die guys that seem to play better from behind.

The great thing is, this is a young team with stars like Sal Frelick, Jackson Chourio, Cooper Pratt, Brice Turang, etc., all under contract or team control for several seasons. The move to sign guys like Chourio, Pratt and Luis Lara to long-term deals before they ever reached the major leagues looks like pure genius now. Pitching? That's young too, with Miz (gotta be the Cy Young winner), Logan Henderson, Robert Gasser leading the way.

Don't forget, this franchise has probably the top farm system in all of baseball as well. Lots of solid young talent, like Jesus Made, coming up.

The fans ate this up, with standing-room-only crowds at AmFam (seating 41,900) for all the playoff games. Hell, they even sold out watch parties and created a game-like atmosphere with 50/50 raffles and Sausage Races.

Enjoy all this, Wisconsin. Moments like this are to be savored.

THIS WORLD SERIES reminds me of the 1982 team. Was with the Oshkosh Northwestern in 1982. I had been down to several Brewers games at County Stadium that season, working a few but mostly for fun. Covered games 4 & 5 of the ALCS when Milwaukee came back from 2-1 down to win the 5 game series. After Game 4, I headed down to the locker room for interviews, etc. No problem...

Sitting next to Dan Vander Pas of the Appleton Post-Crescent next day -- we sat waaaaay down the left field line in the mezzanine -- I remarked to him how wild the locker room was. He goes "you had locker room credentials? I didn't..."

So, I look at my credentials and DID NOT HAVE locker room access either. But after the Brewers won Game 5 and everybody went crazy, I went down and walked in again like I was supposed to be there. Didn't hurt that the first person I saw was Jimmy Gantner, who I had a personal relationship with. I just went "JIMMY!!!" and kept on walking. Got some great interviews, got sprayed with champagne by Stormin' Gorman Thomas ( he was shouting "I anoint you! I anoint you! I anoint you!" to the media, etc., surrounding him like a priest spreading holy water).

Some great times there.....best story, I think, was an interview with Rob Piccciolo, the back-up to Robin Yount, after Milwaukee beat St. Louis in Game 5 to go up 3-1 and take the World Series back to St. Louis.

I was looking around trying to decide who to go to. The media was packed 8-10 deep, or more, around Yount and Paul Molitor. Farther away Picciolo was all alone. I thought there's a good story, how do you stay ready behind an All-Star? When the only time you're going into the game is if Robin is severely injured or dead. So I went over also thinking "I'll be your friend, Rob...." and got a great story.

So many fab memories from covering those games. I had a friend text me before the WS started, asking if I was getting tickets for this once-in-a-lifetime event. I said n. While experiencing 2026 is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for a lot of fans, I had mine in 1982.

A BIT OF A CORRECTION regarding my Packer season ticket quest -- I moved up a moved up a whopping 1,337 spots from the previous year.