Brewers able to rise to the occasion
Late homers kept streak alive Easter Sunday
With the sports world on hold, we present a countdown of the 50 greatest moments in Wisconsin sports history over the past 50 years. This is No. 11.
The 1987 Brewers needed a nickname.
Local radio station WLUM-FM offered to give a fan who came up with the best nickname a trip to Anaheim to watch the Brewers face the California Angels later that season, calling the competition “Put a Tag on the Brewers.” But the stipulation was to generate something that incorporated the name of manager Tom Trebelhorn, following a recent Milwaukee trend in the vein of Bambi's Bombers or Harvey's Wallbangers. Those teams had captured Milwaukee's imagination under the direction of managers George Bamberger and Harvey Kuenn, respectively.
Submissions included Trebel-Shooters, Trebel's Rebels and The Tommy Guns.
The Milwaukee Journal ran its own contest, and Jeffrey D. Rosenbauer of Greenfield was given four box seats to a Brewers game for providing the nickname Cheese Whiz Kids.
Adopting a nickname was crucial because the Brewers were off to a magical start, recording 13 straight wins to match a Major League Baseball record, incuding an unforgettable 6-4 win April 19, 1987. But none of those clever names stuck. No offense to Trebelhorn, whose teams posted a respectable .515 winning percentage in his six seasons, but the team's identity wound up becoming something much more straightforward.
The Brewers were 20-3 when they suddenly lost 12 straight games. Paul Molitor would later embark on a 39game hitting streak and Teddy Higuera on a 32-inning scoreless streak. It was Milwaukee Sentinel Brewers reporter Tom Haudricourt who first coined the moniker that lasted forever: Team Streak.
It may be the wildest single-season
ride in Brewers history. The 91-win unit was two games under .500 at the all-star break but rallied on the back of sweet-swinging Molitor. The team didn't go to the playoffs but gave Brewers fans a load of memories, including one warm holiday early in the season.
In fact, when you say the name of the holiday in Milwaukee, there's a very real chance it's a reference to the 1987 Brewers: Easter Sunday.
Fans celebrate the 1987 Easter Sunday win.
‘Not impressed’
Texas Rangers manager Bobby Valentine famously said he was “not impressed” with the Brewers when they recorded their 11th straight win, sending the Rangers to their eighth straight loss in the process. The words “not impressed” made it onto the blackboard in the Brewers clubhouse on the morning before game No. 12.
“I'm not impressed either,” said bullpen coach Larry Haney. “I'm awed. This club is just amazing. They won't give up.”
The Brewers were having fun heading into that series finale. Trainer John Adam and equipment manager Tony Migliaccio famously conducted their “first annual Easter egg hunt,” with the number of each player scrawled upon an egg hiding somewhere on the premises. Starting pitcher Mike Birkbeck found his immediately, and one by one, everyone else discovered theirs as well — everyone except Robin Yount, Molitor and catcher BJ Surhoff.
Yount and Molitor found theirs in the field of play when they went to man their positions. The last was finally discovered when home-plate umpire Larry McCoy handed Surhoff an egg instead of a ball during warmups.
In the game itself, Rob Deer's sliding attempt on Pete O'Brien's looper in the fifth went for naught when the ball popped out of his glove. One run scored, and Pete Incaviglia followed with a two-run homer to give Texas a 4-0 lead.
“That ball should have been caught,” Deer said. “I tried to catch it, but the ball popped out of my glove. I thought about it the whole game.”
That persisted after Deer homered in the bottom of the fifth to get the Brewers a run back. It was still 4-1 when Mitch Williams carved up the Brewers for seven outs, including three eighth-inning strikeouts of Dale Sveum, Molitor and Yount.
But something unusual happened when Mark Clear, who'd been struggling and merely needed to get some work in after a week without pitching, worked a 1-2-3 eighth. The 29,357 fans in attendance at County Stadium gave the Brewers an energetic ovation.
“Maybe that's what we needed,” said first baseman Greg Brock, who had three hits in the game. “They were on their feet before we got off the field. That really got our adrenaline flowing.”
‘That ball got small in a hurry’
Glenn Braggs walked, and Brock softly singled against the lefty Williams, with Rick Manning taking Brock's place on the basepaths. Williams induced a flyout from Cecil Cooper, and Valentine made the decision to switch pitchers for the right-handed swinging Deer. In came breaking-pitch specialist Greg Harris.
Deer swung and missed at the first curveball he saw. He didn't miss the second.
“I just saw it,” Deer said. “Soooo big. I don't remember running the bases. I got back to the on-deck circle, and everybody was jumping all over me.”
Despite a strong wind blowing in, Deer deployed the ball 450 feet out to left field for a game-tying three-run home run. The ball looked like it would have left the stadium in stiller air. Milwaukee was up for grabs.
“Jiminy Christmas, that ball got small in a hurry,” Trebelhorn said afterward.
To that point, Deer was leading the American League with seven homers and 17 RBI in 11 games. Acquired from the Giants before the 1986 season for minor leaguers Dean Freeland and Eric Pilkington, Deer would become known as one of the most prodigious home-run hitters in Brewers history.
“As soon as we got the two on and then the fly ball by Coop, I said I'm going to look for a pitch that I can hit hard somewhere, and he got a slider up a little bit and I hit it,” Deer said.
It was a home run that would live forever, but not until Milwaukee completed the rally and won the game. Surhoff struck out, Gantner took a walk on a 3-2 pitch, and up to the plate stepped the shortstop Sveum.
Like Deer, Sveum had started the 1987 season on an offensive hot streak. He collected hits in each of the season's first 10 games but saw his hitting streak snapped in win No. 11. He was 0-for-3 on Easter Sunday until the moment he started a new streak.
Harris didn't give Sveum a breaking pitch, but rather a fastball up in the zone. Swinging from the left side, Sveum ambushed it for a game-winning two-run homer. The Brewers had rallied for a five-run ninth to win a 12th straight game, 6-4.
“I knew Jimmy was running,” Sveum said. “If I hit a double, we're still going to score the run and win the game.”
Sveum came out for one curtain call, then another, then together with Deer for a third.
“That's the first one for me,” Sveum said. “You've got to enjoy something like that, especially when Robby and I both went out there. When you've got us both, it really gives you a good feeling.”
“My goodness, wasn't that something?” Trebelhorn said. “It was something to be part of and something to behold. It's amazing. I'm rather drained.”
“It's hard to explain,” Deer said. “This is the greatest day of my life. This is the funnest game I've ever played in. It's just hard to explain.”
George Webb
The 12th win triggered a longrunning promotion from local restaurant chain George Webb, which promised free burgers to patrons if the Brewers won 12 straight games.
Radio stations like WKTI-FM pledged to broadcast for a six-hour window the following Wednesday live from a George Webb restaurant on 76th Street. WLZR-FM even gave away free hamburgers to the first 103 diners on Monday, two days before the promotional giveaway, at a George Webb on Layton Avenue.
It continues to be one of the most-discussed promotions in greater Milwaukee. The Brewers weren't able to reach the 12-win threshold again until 2018, when a late-season winning streak into the playoffs fed the fans yet again.
In 1987, Milwaukee fans flooded hotlines for tickets to the Monday night game at Comiskey Park in Chicago, and those who traveled south saw the streak extend to 13, tying Atlanta for the MLB record. Milwaukee lost the following night, and nobody could have known the roller-coaster ride still had many twists and turns.
“They're on a high, just flying. They're not touching the ground . ... Somebody will zap'em good,” said Texas catcher Darrell Porter, a former member of the Brewers and a nemesis from his days with the Cardinals in the 1982 season. “But this stream will carry them. It will be a stepping stone for their season. I'm not saying they're going to win it, but I don't think they'll finish last.”
How the moment lives on
Milwaukee didn't make the playoffs that year or any year thereafter until 2008, a tortured run of 26 straight years without a postseason berth. But at the time, the Brewers were still one of the top teams in the league, though after a push for the AL East title in 1992, the Brewers went 14 years without a winning season.
Sveum returned to Milwaukee as an assistant coach under Ned Yost in 2006, and he was promoted to interim manager in 2008 when Milwaukee fired Yost with 12 games to go. Thus, Sveum, who never appeared in the postseason with the Brewers as a player, was able to manage them there in snapping that 26-year drought.