BEST OF BASEBALL:

Best Sports Story, Team Division: Milwaukee Brewers

Our team surprised and thrilled us during the first half of the season, blasting home runs in bunches (talking about you, Eric Thames) and ending up in first place at the All-Star break, five and a half games ahead of the underperforming world-champion Chicago Cubs. Perhaps, we thought, General Manager David Stearns had not doomed us to years of losing after he traded away our best players to rebuild the team from the ground up.

Worst Sports Story, Team Division: Milwaukee Brewers

Or maybe we were doomed after all. After the break, the Brewers forgot how to score runs (and the Cubs remembered). Within 10 days, the Milwaukee lead was gone. By August 10, the Crew was trailing the Cubs and tied with the St. Louis Cardinals for second place, with the fourth-place Pirates breathing down their necks.

Biggest Caveat: Milwaukee Brewers

We write this in late August, so there’s no way of knowing how the season will end. The team has shown a little life lately, and they just took two out of three in Los Angeles, where teams generally go to die. Doom, hope, doom, hope – we just can’t stand it.