Tonight's major league schedule pits the Minnesota Twins traveling to Miller Park to take on the Milwaukee Brewers. This is the portion of the interleague schedule where Major League Baseball tries to force rivalries upon some teams. In most cases, these rivalries make sense. Twins and Brewers? Good job. Yankees and Mets? Solid. Cubs and White Sox? Excellent. But then again we also have the fierce rivalries such as the Padres and the Mariners and the Red Sox and Phillies. Oooh!
Most of these rivalries are filled with hatred. For example the Subway Series between the Mets and the Yankees are filled with foul mouthed scum from New York trash talking each other into oblivion with comments such as "I'm going to break you like a piece of bread from Biscotti's on 62nd street." or "You're so stupid you actually cheer for the Knicks! [pre-LeBron]" Yes, there is quite a lot of ill will towards each other, but when it comes to the Twins and the Brewers, there really isn't quite that much hatred.
There could several reasons for this. The most obvious is that they don't play each other all that much, six times a season to be exact. This was not the case before 1998, when the Brewers moved to the National League to accomade the arrival of the Tampa Bay Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks. But even then, the Brewers weren't that good, so there was no sense of a rivalry between the two teams. Remember, in the history of the Brewers, they've made the playoffs TWICE in nearly 40 years. So there never really was a sense of jealousy from Twins fans as they laid beatdown after beatdown on the crew. Kirby Puckett's 6-6 game with a grand slam in 1991 seems to stick out in most minds. Now that both teams are competitive, that might change if they were in the division and who knows? Maybe the Brewers would be as hated as the White Sox right now if they still were in the American League.
The second reason could be that the teams are almost mirror images of each other when it comes to their market. Neither the Brewers or Twins can go out and buy high priced free agents and usually when they do go for a free agent, the signee usually goes out and flops like a fish. Both teams have cores of players that are homegrown. (6 players in the Twins starting lineup were drafted by the Twins as 6 players in the Brewers starting lineup were drafted by the Brewers.) Because of this, these teams both have an underdog status. I cheer for the Brewers when they play the Cubs, and I'm guessing that Brewers fans would love to see the Twins beat the Yankees or Red Sox.
Finally, I think it's just fun to see the two teams play against each other. Don't get me wrong. I'm cheering for the Twins during this series, but I've been tempted to buy an old school Brewers hat. (The logo is the best in baseball in my opinion.) If the stakes were raised to...say a world series...I'd be shouting the same things at Ryan Braun that I do Brett Favre...oh wait...crap...anyways, the point I'm trying to make is this. We do want to see our teams win, but it doesn't have the same point of urgency that it would have if we were playing our divisional rivals. It's all about bragging rights, road trips, and, oh yes, sausages. So let's go eat for the sausage cycle (Hot Dog, Bratwurst, Italian Sausage, Polish Sausage, and Chorizo) and have a good time.
And by the way....GO TWINS!!!!!
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