And the Cubs brought their fans, too. Not only did their fans take over the ballpark, they took over the parking lot with their tailgating and a sea of red white and blue colors. Their dark blue, gray and blue and white pinstripe blue was all over the place.
“We don't like the fact that we allowed their fans to come in our park and have a four-day party,” Brewer manager Ned Yost said after the game July 31. “But that's our fault.”
They brought brooms to Miller Park at the last game of the series. Those Cubs fans used them in the ballpark and in the parking lot. The Cubs tailgaters took their brooms and made a symbolic sweep in front of disappointed Brewer passer-bys. And that was how the series was summed up.
“I think (Chicago) just played a great, great four games,” Brewer reliever Eric Gagne said. “They beat us. We got schooled.”
Chicago won all four games in the Brewtown Beatdown. They averaged 7.8 runs per game to Milwaukee's 2.8. The overall batting averages in the games were .322 for the visitors and .226 for the home team. The Brewers struck out 43 times to Chicago's 27. The Cubs won last Monday's game 6-4. They beat the Brewers 7-1 last Tuesday.
Last Wednesday, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig was at the park. He was in the press box nearly reacting like it was 2002 all over again. Everyone who watched the All-Star game here that year saw Selig throw his arms up in disgust after the game went 12 innings. Both league managers ran out of players to use, so the game ended in a 7-7 tie.
Selig probably couldn't believe the Cubs ran all over the Brewers in his own backyard. Last Wednesday, Brewer starter Manny Parra kept the Cub lead at 2-1. The game could've been tied in the fifth inning. Catcher Jason Kendall singled. He was caught trying to steal second base. Parra tripled. It could have been a 2-2 tie. The momentum then shifted back to the Cubs.
Parra got the hook in the sixth after Ryan Theriot's triple scored pitcher Ryan Dempster and Alfonso Soriano. Reed Johnson's hit brought home Dempster. The Cubs led 5-1. Chicago got two more runs in the ninth. Prince Fielder's home run completed the scoring in a 7-2 Brewer loss.
Dempster, with nine strikeouts, explained how his pitching kept hitters like J.J. Hardy (0 for 4, one strikeout), Ryan Braun (0-4, 3), Corey Hart (3 strikeouts), Bill Hall (0-3, 2) and Mike Cameron (0-3, 2) off balance.
“I was able to stay away from the middle part of the plate for the most part,” he said July 30. “You have to be really aggressive and try to take that away from them.”
In an 11-4 loss to the Cubs, July 31, everything went wrong for Milwaukee. Starter Dave Bush was cruising along for the first two innings. He made two mistakes to Chicago's Jim Edmonds in the third and fourth innings.
“The first one (pitch) was a fastball in the middle, a bad pitch,” Bush said. “The second one's a changeup. I'm not kind of sure of the second pitch. I didn't see exactly where it was when I made too much of a judgment call.”
Edmonds hit a solo homer off Bush in the third inning and a grand slam in the fourth, giving him five RBI's on the day and a Chicago 5-0 lead. The Cubs scored six runs off Brewer relievers in the eighth and ninth innings. The Brewers got a run in the seventh inning and three in the ninth.
Gagne sent Edmonds a message in the Chicago ninth by throwing inside. Home plate umpire Doug Eddings threw Gagne out. Yost came out of the dugout while players from both teams stayed put. He was trying to explain that it wasn't done on purpose, but to no avail.
“(It's a) new rule that you can't go in there (inside the plate to hitters),” Gagne said.
Yost was asked about Gagne's inside pitch.
“He (Eddings) said he thought Gagne did it on purpose.”
For the Brewers, the best part of last week after the Cub sweep was leaving town for games at Atlanta and Cincinnati. Milwaukee won two out of three games from the Braves. After the Reds series, they play the Washington Nationals at home, August 8-11.
“I don't think it'll be a happy plane ride to Atlanta tonight (last Thursday),” Yost said. “I can't think of another better thing to do. To be honest with you, just to get out of here, right now, go to Atlanta. We played good on the road since the second half, and, you know, just kind of regroup.”
The Brewers will make one more visit to Wrigley Field, September 16-18. The Cubs come back to Miller Park Sept. 26-28, the last games of the regular season. But the Cardinals caught back up with the Brewers in the wild-card race. If the Brewers lose their focus, they'll be on the outside looking in. Even though the Cubs have a nice cushion in the division, nothing's finalized.
“You know, this is not a death sentence by any means,” Yost said. “If it was, you know, September, yeah, this would hurt. We have plenty of time to recover from this, get back on track and right the ship so to speak.
“We're a better team than what we showed the Cubs in this four-game series.”
