The man is in despair and it�s his own fault. Sure, he�s needed some bravery for things not his fault and he has tried to be very, very brave. He dutifully turns on the radio for each game, hoping, but not expecting, that maybe today will be the day. He lives for the days that the Brewers manage not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He held on through yesterday when the winning run came in on a pitcher�s balk that resulted from the Brewers� pitcher getting his cleats stuck in the mound. He held on by telling himself that it couldn�t get worse than that�and then, for a moment, most likely because the Brewers sometimes cause him to stop listening in self-defense, it did.

It wasn�t anything said about the Brewers that took him from the slim thread of hope to despair. Mr. Philately opposed the building of Brewers� stadium on the ground that we might better be served by a AAA team but, long ago this season, he accepted that what we got was an expensive, fancy stadium with a faulty roof at which a triple AAA team pretends to play major league ball. He�s learned to define a winning season as one in which his team does not end up in the cellar. No, the Brewers may not give him much to go on but nothing he imagined the announcer said about them broke his heart.

The imagined blow came from an unexpected source: the Cubs. True Brewers fans pretend to hate the Cubs but they don�t really mean it. True Brewers fans recognize the similarities between Brewers fans and Cubs fans, even if only grudgingly. Certainly Cubs fans know what it is like to hold on and continue to root for your team when all the fates are telling you that nothing will come of it. Sure, they live down there in that city but, hey, they are okay to deal with when they drive up for games.

But Mr. Philately hates the Yankees as much as he loves the Brewers and he thought he heard that the Cubs had traded Sammy Sosa to the Yankees. (What he probably heard was something about Sammy Sosa, Yankees manager Joe Torre, and the All-Star game but he did not realize that until after an internet search.) For a man like Mr. Philately, an old-fashioned good player who seems to care about fans should never go to the best team money can buy. For him, the Yankees represent Enron and Worldcom and Martha Stewart and all that is wrong with corporate greed in America. For him, the brashness of the Yankees, who once passed out a survey to those at their stadium which gave �to root for anyone but the Yankees� as an answer to �why are you here today,� is offensive, rude, and, he would like to think, untrue to American values.

In that moment when he thought he heard what no one said, baseball (and his sometimes listening habit) betrayed him. He was in despair but he�s strong and, even before I realized he misheard, I knew he�d get through the crisis. He�d snap back but his life would be immeasurably sadder.

For a brief, despairing moment, he thought Sammy was going to the Yankees but he consoled himself by remembering that he doesn�t have to worry about losing any of his beloved Brewers. The Yankees don�t take little leaguers.

LAST YEAR: Nothing More Than Feelings

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Copyright 2006 by Ellen