Tonight, the Milwaukee Brewers, owners of the best regular season record in Major League Baseball (MLB) this year, host the San Diego Padres in the first game of the National League Division Series (NLDS).  The winner of the best of five set will move on to the seven-game National League Championship Series (NLCS), to face the winner of the other NLDS now beginning between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Atlanta Braves.  The winner of the NLCS moves on to the World Series.

The Brewers are respected throughout the baseball world for their sustained success over the last decade – they have made the MLB playoffs in seven of those ten years – which all recognize is a testament to their front office and managerial excellence that has enabled the team to consistently excel during the regular season against other, much richer National League teams.  Yet, they have fallen short of the World Series upon reaching the National League playoffs, since their postseason opponents, featuring highly-paid current or past All Stars at seemingly every position, have been able to “load up” against them in a manner not possible during the regular season.

That said:  perhaps this is the Brewers’ year.  I base that tentatively optimistic notion on nothing I’ve seen – I’ve yet to see the Brewers play on television, my only exposure being one thoroughly enjoyable evening a few weeks ago at the team’s American Family Field which for me was more about renewing the experience of a Major League park than the team itself – but upon a comment by a friend who is a clear-eyed observer of Milwaukee’s strengths and gaps.  His comment, in effect:  “Milwaukee has very good pitching.  It can carry them past the Dodgers; and if they get to the Series, no American League team they’ll face is as good as the top teams in the National League.”

Obviously, one excellent pitcher does not make a pitching staff, but having an ace that is, in the old parlance, a true “stopper” can make a huge difference to a team’s success in the playoffs.  Right now, the Brewers have such an ace – 24-year-old Jacob Misiorowski, known locally as, “The Miz.”  (Although I normally stay fairly formal in my personal references even in sports posts, I will use “The Miz” here … because it’s fun. 😊)  The Miz has a fastball over 100 miles an hour – which overmatches even major league hitters accustomed to fastballs in the 90s – has won 16 games this year against 5 losses with a 1.80 earned run average, and is reputed to be the frontrunner for the National League’s 2026 Cy Young Award.

Although I have never seen The Miz pitch, no one living in Wisconsin (not even TLOML, who is completely uninterested in sports) could fail to be aware of The Miz.  He has become the object of immediate Wisconsin fan adulation.  The night we visited American Family Field, I noted with interest that jerseys bearing The Miz’ number 32 (see:  I know his number although I’ve never seen him pitch) significantly outnumbered any other jersey number in the park with the possible exception of Hall of Famer Robin Yount’s No. 19 (Mr. Yount retired in 1993).  We know someone who has paid an impressive sum for a framed autographed Miz jersey.  The Miz has only been in the Major Leagues since June of last year.

This was a long windup (as we say in the game 😉), for the benefit of those who don’t follow Wisconsin sports, to the follow-through:  it will come as no surprise that The Miz will be starting tonight’s first playoff game for the Brewers.  Although Milwaukee is favored to move past the Padres, in a short series anything can happen (another cliché that is a cliché because it is true).  While no multi-game series is necessarily determined by the outcome of the first game, history shows that first game winners have a much better chance of moving on to the next round.  It strikes me that such might be particularly true in this case, with so much objectively and subjectively riding for the Milwaukee faithful on the shoulders of a 24-year-old.  The Miz is human; he lost 5 games this season.  No matter how well he pitches, he will only win if his hitters hit.  The Padres are good, or they wouldn’t be here.

I am hoping for the best.  Milwaukee deserves a World Championship.  The 1982 team featuring Mr. Yount, fellow Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, and a host of other colorful competitors (“Harvey’s Wallbangers” 😉) came that close – losing in Game 7 of the World Series — primarily on tremendous hitting and clutch situational pitching; today’s team can’t match the ’82 team’s offense but has widespread superior pitching.

Sandy Koufax (in baseball history, the game’s most renowned No. 32 😊) is remembered for his regular season brilliance but considered an icon for his domination of the 1963 and 1965 World Series – in the latter series, pitching a 3-hit complete game shutout on 2 days’ rest to win Game 7, an unheard-of effort today.  Greg Maddox, a four-time National League Cy Young Award winner with an 11-14 playoff record, is remembered, fairly or unfairly, as a great regular season pitcher who was … a great regular season pitcher.

Legends are made during the playoffs.  Tonight will begin to indicate whether the framed autographed Miz jersey our acquaintance purchased was a bargain – or whether it will be ruefully regarded in a few years as an unfortunate acquisition gathering dust in a basement or antique store.

I know I said yesterday I wouldn’t be entering much before Election Day, but realized afterward that if one was going to expound on The Miz, today was the day.  😊

We’ll see what happens.      

[For those not attuned to the Green Bay Packers’ fortunes:  the team is 1 – 2, and was lucky to have escaped with its victory in Week 2 against the traditionally hapless New York Jets.  Last night the Atlanta Falcons – who had lost the preceding week at home 34 – 3 — beat the Packers in Lambeau Field 35 – 14.  I didn’t even bother to watch the second half; at the break the outcome was clear.]

In this original post, way back on January 11, 2026, reflecting upon the Packers’ playoff collapse against the Chicago Bears the previous night, I indicated doubts about Packers’ General Manager Brian Gutekunst, Packers’ Head Coach Matt LaFleur, and Packers’ Quarterback Jordan Love:

“Mr. Gutekunst hired [Mr.] LaFleur a number of years ago, and clearly Mr. LaFleur is technically an excellent coach, but one must question whether he has sufficiently instilled in his players that pride, the will to win, that is required to win a Super Bowl. 

It doesn’t look to me like he has.

Likewise, although the color commentator lauded [Mr.] Love at one point last night … I wasn’t so sure.  … There seems to me to be a question whether Mr. Love … has what it takes to win a Super Bowl.  …

I would suggest that Mr. Gutekunst — who has essentially staked his legacy on Messrs. LaFleur and Love – should be asking himself this morning:  Do these guys have … what it takes? 

If he isn’t, the Packer Board of Directors should be asking themselves: Does Mr. Gutekunst have what it takes?” [Emphasis in Original]

After posting that note, I literally mentally turned the Packers off until the opening game of this season.  [Nothing unusual here – since the early 2000s, I’ve paid no attention to Green Bay from the last game of one season until the first real game of the next (the sole exceptions being the years in which the franchise was contemplating its transitions from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers and then from Mr. Rodgers to Mr. Love 😉).]  (It wasn’t difficult to shift one’s focus:  Renee Goode had just been shot, Alex Pretti was soon to be shot, the Trump Regime was then discussing invading Greenland … and that was only January.)  I discovered in doing a brief internet research for this post that Team president Ed Policy and the Packers’ Board of Directors provided multiyear extensions for Messrs. Gutekunst and LaFleur in January, 2026.  Had I been aware at the time, I would then have entered a postscript, probably pretty neutrally observing that the Board had clearly decided that Messrs. Gutekunst, LaFleur, and Love did have “what it takes” to win a championship, almost certainly concluding with, “We’ll see what happens.”

Well, we’ve seen what’s happened. 

Given our current domestic and global state of affairs, the Packers’ fortunes or those of any other sporting organization obviously aren’t worth a whit.  But I’ll miss the weekly temporary distraction the team provided.

On we march.

Given all that’s going on in our world, a short frolic note.

Granting that I turned the game off before it reached its conclusion last night – I could sense how it was going to end even while the Green Bay Packers were still leading the Chicago Bears in their playoff contest, ultimately won by the Bears – I went to bed reflecting on the relevance of a decades-old observation to the Packers’ future.

We came to Wisconsin in the mid-1970s, during the quarter-century Packer wasteland between the Vince Lombardi Packers’ last Super Bowl victory in 1968 and the rise of the Ron Wolf – Mike Holmgren – Brett Favre Packers in 1992.  Having been raised in the Chicago area, I was a Bear fan when we arrived.  What caused me to switch my allegiance from the Bears to the Packers over time — during the heyday of the Mike Ditka Bears and long before Mr. Favre’s arrival — was the same sympathy for the underdog that had made me a Cub fan in the early 1960s:  the team tried so hard, but still lost.  [As with the rise of the Cubs in the late 1960s (despite our ultimate crushing disappointment), watching the Packers become good in the mid-1990s was all the sweeter because one had rooted for the team when it had been a doormat.]

One cannot live in Wisconsin without being emersed in Packer lore.  The observation that came to mind last night was one that I had heard made by an old NFL coach (now undoubtedly long dead) who had competed against Mr. Lombardi’s Packers, speaking about the period in which the two professional football leagues — the traditional “NFL” of the Packers, Bears, New York Giants, et. al., and the upstart “AFL” of such teams as the New York Jets, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Oakland Raiders – were in the process of effecting their merger into the NFL we know today.  The observation was this:  By the time Mr. Lombardi’s Packers won their two Super Bowls, they were an aging team past their prime; that by that point, there were two or three traditional NFL teams, including Coach Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys, that “on paper,” were better, more talented teams than Green Bay; that for those Packers, reaching the Super Bowl was more of a challenge than winning it.  He stated that the reason that the Lombardi Packers won their last two NFL championships – overcoming those more talented teams, which got them into the Super Bowl, was simple:  they had greater pride, more will to win.

I saw enough last night to conclude that even without Linebacker Micah Parsons, Tight End Tucker Kraft, and Defensive Lineman Devonte Wyatt, the Green Bay Packers were a better football team than the Chicago Bears.  The Bears won because they had the greater will to win.  If I were Packers General Manager Brian Gutekunst this morning, I would have to be doing some soul searching.  The spirit in any team is instilled at the top.  Mr. Lombardi’s Packers were his embodiment.  Mr. Gutekunst hired Packers Head Coach Matt LaFleur a number of years ago, and clearly Mr. LaFleur is technically an excellent coach, but one must question whether he has sufficiently instilled in his players that pride, the will to win, that is required to win a Super Bowl. 

It doesn’t look to me like he has.

Likewise, although the color commentator lauded Packers Quarterback Jordan Love at one point last night, indicating that Mr. Love had moved beyond the legacies of his two storied predecessors, Mr. Favre and Aaron Rodgers, I wasn’t so sure.  Say whatever you will about Messrs. Favre and Rodgers’ behavior off the field, there have been no greater competitors, no players with a greater will to win, in the history of the NFL.  Sometime in the third quarter last night, as Chicago changed its defensive schemes and was effectively thwarting Green Bay’s offensive game plan, either Mr. Favre or Mr. Rodgers would have said, “F—k this.  We are done running the football.  Put in the back who’s the best blocker and receiver.  I am taking this G-d D-n game over, and we’re going to win.”  Everybody in the Packers’ huddle would have straightened up, that football would have been flying at warp speed in every direction … and the Packers would have won.  You know it.  I know it.  And every Bear fan who reads these notes who’s lived through the last 30 years knows it.

There seems to me to be a question whether Mr. Love, a fine young man who is without doubt a talented quarterback if even a shade less so than his predecessors, has what it takes to win a Super Bowl.  It’s not physical talent; 40 years ago, Bear Quarterback Jim McMahon won a championship on an indomitable will to win despite having much less talent than Mr. Love has.  It’s not his football smarts; he effectively executes the Packer offense.  It’s not his low-key manner; nobody could be lower key than Joe Montana, the best quarterback I’ve ever seen, whose manner masked a fierce will to win.

It’s whether he has the will. 

I would suggest that Mr. Gutekunst — who has essentially staked his legacy on Messrs. LaFleur and Love – should be asking himself this morning:  Do these guys have … what it takes?  

If he isn’t, the Packer Board of Directors should be asking themselves: Does Mr. Gutekunst have what it takes?

Three final thoughts: 

First, all congratulations to the Bears and best wishes to those Bear fans who read these notes.  Although I have trouble believing that the Bears have the talent to win a Super Bowl, the point of this note is obviously that one never counts out a team that has the will to win that the Bears have.  Although I probably won’t be tuning in, I’ll be rooting for the Bears as long as they stay in the hunt.

Second, despite the disappointing outcome of last night’s contest from a Green Bay Packer fan’s point of view, it was refreshing to have even a couple of hours’ distraction from the many challenges to our way of life that we currently face.  No harm in that, only good.

Third, nothing that went on last night brought either National Guardsman Sarah Beckstrom or Renee Good back to life.  Our continuing peaceful work on behalf of American democracy lies before us.  

Let’s take a short break from our struggle to maintain the American way of life and consider a subject thoroughly irrelevant:  the fortunes of the Green Bay Packers.

A glance at the NFL NFC Conference standings at the time this is typed shows that if the playoffs were to begin this weekend – a silly notion, but stick with me – Green Bay would hold the top seed in the NFC.  Having seen the Green and Gold play a few times – not all of their games, mind you, but most – one thought immediately comes to mind:  that if the playoffs did start this weekend, Green Bay would be the team that all the other playoff teams would most want to play.  To say that the Packers have seemed less than a juggernaut thus far … well … sums it up.

I did watch (on tape delay, of course) Green Bay’s recent victory over the Arizona Cardinals.  Looking at the Cardinals’ record and not being aware of their back story, one might assume that the narrowness of Green Bay’s victory underscores my case.  Here, I would differ.  Arizona has apparently had a bunch of close and tough losses, and the Cardinals played hard.  They’re a significantly better team than their record, and the Packers can be proud of their victory.  Arizona backup quarterback Jacoby Brissett had a truly impressive performance, but watching the game made me feel in one respect that it was déjà vu … all over again.

I have lamented more than once in these pages over the years that the Brett Favre Packers should have won more Super Bowls than the one they claimed, but they had a weak link that for years the Dallas Cowboys exploited:  in the 1992 NFL Draft, then-Green Bay General Manager Ron Wolf drafted Cornerback Terrell Buckley out of Florida State University rather that Cornerback Troy Vincent out of the University of Wisconsin, and while Mr. Vincent went on to have a distinguished career, Mr. Buckley didn’t experience the success that the Packers had hoped for.  In crunch time in big games between the Cowboys and the Packers, then-Cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman would seemingly simply pass to whichever of his talented wide receivers Mr. Buckley was trying to cover.  The results were predictable.  The Green and Gold didn’t finally win a championship, despite having Mr. Favre, Reggie White, and a host of other talented players, until they drafted Craig Newsome, who took Mr. Buckley’s place.

And again:  in 2010, although the season ended in the only Green Bay Championship in the Aaron Rodgers years, at midseason the team was going virtually nowhere; a primary reason was that a truly remarkable cornerback and classy guy – Charles Woodson – had reached the point that he no longer had elite corner cover skills.  He was regularly being beaten.  Out of desperation, the team moved him into the slot – where, with his football smarts, he proceeded to wreak havoc on opposing offenses – and threw the completely unheralded Sam Shields, who had been a wide receiver in college, into the corner spot.  Mr. Shields unexpectedly proved to have truly elite cover corner skills.  With their Aaron Rodgers offense and a Woodson-in-the-slot, Clay Mathews-led defense, Green Bay morphed from a marginal playoff contender into a World Champion.

Since I spend little time on Green Bay during the offseason even when we’re not struggling to save American democracy, I wasn’t sorry when I heard some time after the fact that the team had parted ways with its celebrated cornerback, Jaire Alexander.  When healthy, Mr. Alexander is a premier corner, but he wasn’t healthy often enough.  That said, Linebacker Micah Parsons’ entrance – Mr. Parsons has been truly impressive — and Mr. Alexander’s departure has flipped the script for the Packers’ defense; last year, the secondary was the team’s defensive strength, its pass rush its liability; this year, Mr. Parsons has galvanized the Packers’ “front seven” while the secondary has been less impressive.  Against the Cardinals, Mr. Brissett went after Cornerback Nate Hobbs, whom the team signed to replace Mr. Alexander, with impunity.  Perhaps he was just having a bad day – it happens, and I haven’t seen all of the Packers’ games – but Mr. Hobbs looked a lot more like Mr. Buckley than he did like Mr. Alexander.

All that said, let’s move on to Green Bay’s upcoming visit to Pittsburgh for its Sunday night matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers.  (Packer fans – y’all know where I’m goin’ with this😉.)  While any game against the Steelers, given the team’s outstanding pedigree, is a formidable challenge, this one will be … different.  We know now-Steeler Quarterback Mr. Rodgers.  He’s a fr… well, we know him 😊.  Although he left Green Bay under seemingly-less acrimonious conditions than did Mr. Favre before him, and has said that he holds no animosity toward Green Bay, that this Sunday’s game will not be “a revenge game” for him, we know that he gets up for particular challenges, and that he will be ready to go on Sunday evening.  He’s now two years into the rehab of his Achilles injury.  I haven’t seen him play a down this year, but don’t have to.  I’m guessing that between his injury and his age, he’s not as mobile as when he was the most accurate passer on the run in NFL history, but I’ll venture that he can still move around under pressure when he has to.  There is no savvier quarterback in the NFL.  No matter what Mr. Rodgers says, I am confident that he well recalls that in his first matchup against Mr. Favre after Mr. Favre left Green Bay, Mr. Favre won. 

I fear that Mr. Hobbs might as well take off his normal Packer jersey and wear one with a big, red X on it.  Given Mr. Parsons’ and the rest of the Packers’ pass rush, the Steelers will have to keep back additional pass protection, but that ball is going to come out quick (speaking fan-speak, rather than grammatically 😉 ) or be thrown away.  You know it.  I know it.  I am confident that the Packer Defensive Braintrust and Mr. Hobbs know it.

Because of Mr. Rodgers, I will venture that this Sunday’s game, although the Steelers are in the AFC, will be as big a test for Mr. Love and the Packers as any they face this season.  If there is any good to be gleaned from Green Bay’s performances against the Cleveland Browns and the Dallas Cowboys, it’s that the team must realize that it can’t afford to be overconfident.  I’m not sure I accept the slim odds currently favoring the Pack.

We’ll see what happens.  This one will be fun.  If the Packers win, maybe they have something.  If they don’t, I’m guessing that despite their current record, they probably don’t.  (Since the game is in the evening, I’ll watch it live, perhaps even past my Medicare-aged bed time 😊 ).

Enjoy the weekend.

Although their pace slowed a bit in the last month of the season, as all who care are aware, the Milwaukee Brewers managed to maintain the top seed in this year’s National League playoff structure with the best record in Major League Baseball.  A little later today, they host the Chicago Cubs in the first game of the second round of the National League playoffs.  Preoccupied with the toxic state of our political environment, I haven’t seen an inning of Brewer baseball this season.  Since old baseball fans are as superstitious as old baseball players, I don’t intend to start watching now.  I venture no opinion as to how they’ll fare against superstar-laden, heavy-payrolled clubs in the playoffs.  That said – and being well aware that more than a few diehard Cub fans read these notes – I think every baseball fan can agree that given its relatively limited resources, the Brewers’ performance this year has been mighty impressive.  I don’t expect to add anything further here about Milwaukee’s fortunes unless the Brewers reach the World Series, and I will find it completely charming if they do.  (But then I certainly won’t watch 😊).

Go Crew.

Although I have watched the vast majority of the Green Bay Packers’ games this season, my interest has been less avid than in past years given my preoccupation with our descent into political cataclysm.  Since the Green and Gold clinched an NFL NFC wildcard playoff berth last week and the playoffs don’t actually begin for another couple of weeks, one might question why I have suggested above that its championship run begins today.

A sports organization’s expectations are based upon its tradition and experience.  I suspect that the New York Yankees and their fans are dissatisfied with the team’s 2024 performance; given the team’s dozens of World Championships, its recent World Series loss probably rendered the season a failure in their eyes.  On the other hand, had the Milwaukee Brewers rather than the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers won the National League pennant, Brewer fans would now be ecstatic with the team’s performance even if New York had swept the Brew Crew in the Fall Classic.

For the Packers, inasmuch as the franchise owns more pro football titles than any other, and given the consistent success the team has had since Brett Favre became the team’s quarterback in 1992, anything less than a championship leaves the Packer Faithful somewhat disappointed (notwithstanding the fact that the team has actually only made it to the Super Bowl three times, winning but twice, over that span).  Even last year – which at the outset was considered by Packer fans a rebuilding year, with many, including me, wondering whether Quarterback Jordan Love had the right stuff – ended with Mr. Love and his young colleagues jelling at the right time and coming tantalizingly close to the making the NFC Championship game.

Despite the respectful commentary that Green Bay is currently receiving from national sports pundits, if one looks at the team’s season in its entirety, it hasn’t been as good as its record indicates.  To date, it has only beaten two teams with good records, and its four losses have been administered by three of the teams that have higher playoff rankings than it does.  At the same time, one of the Packers’ two “quality wins” came against the Seattle Seahawks in Seattle two weeks ago, and the squad convincingly polished off a bad New Orleans Saints team at home this past week – the kind of thrashing a good team should administer to a wanting one.

So I will venture that today, Packer fans will find out whether this year’s team has championship potential.  If Green Bay beats Minnesota in Minnesota, we may have something.  If it doesn’t, we probably don’t.  I’m hoping for the best; a long January playoff run will provide a pleasant distraction.  🙂