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Brewers beat White Sox in unlikely garb
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Milwaukee Brewers' Corey Hart hits a two-run triple during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Chicago White Sox, Friday, June 12, 2009, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
I’ve often said that the Brewers faithful should downplay the 1980s style of the throwback “mb” ball-and-glove logo in favor of the current, phantasmagoric Midnight Blue cursive.
But hot damn, those old uniforms looked sharp last night.
And according to some research, I think the Brewers hadn’t won wearing their old pinstripe home whites against the ChiSox road grays since May 4, 1993.
I wasn’t the only one who thought we were seeing too much of the old-school unis since they were brought back in 2005 for every Sunday home game. Now that the retro night has switched from Sunday to Friday and back again, the players seem to have grown weary of the comparisons to ’82. They asked to wear the current home whites instead of the throwbacks for the final Friday home game to assert their own identity.
This year, a pleasant compromise was struck. The team would wear the retros on the first Friday home game of each month, about the same schedule as a southeastern Wisconsin church fish fry. But in renewing a rivalry — the Crew hadn’t played Chicago since 2001 and had lost six straight to the Sox — and snapping a losing streak — four in a row to Atlanta and Colorado — the refreshed look was just in time.
In searching for the last time the Brewers beat the Sox with this uniform combination, I went back to their last meeting in Milwaukee during the strike-shortened season of 1994. They played three games on July 8, 9 and 10 — and Chicago won all three. Then I remembered the Crew was wearing those awful uniforms, with the Notre Dame-style “BM” on the cap.
So then I went back to 1993, in which the White Sox came to Milwaukee County Stadium for a four-game spanning July 15-18. And swept the Brewers. Noticing a pattern?
Further back, the Brewers did take the first game of a three game series, 6-1, on May 4, 1993. Only the first game. That might be the last time they won wearing this uniform combination. To give a sense of how long ago that was, Frank Thomas started at first base for the White Sox. Bo Jackson started in left field. Carlton Fisk was subbed in as the backup catcher in a double switch, and made the final out of the game behind Jackson. Carlton. Fisk.
The Brewers played Pat Listach, Greg Vaughn, John Jaha, and Dave Nilsson. Mike Boddicker got the win, and Kirk McCaskill the loss.
In other news, Mike Cameron has some history with the White Sox.
The Brewers will wear their throwbacks again on July 10, a game I’ll attend. That game will be notable because it will be the first time Manny Ramírez will play in Miller Park since a 2003 series for Boston — the first game of which I attended, in which he hit a solo home run in a Red Sox loss to the Crew.
