Hop on the Brewers bandwagon, quick

By RICK SOLEM

It snowed out this morning, to most of our disappointment.

And though it’s a beautiful sight (sort of), we all moan and groan, despite knowing it won’t last the day … kind of like the Milwaukee Brewers’ start to the season.

People jump on the bandwagon, start talking playoffs, maybe World Series, but we all know – or should know – it’s not going to last.

After a nine-game winning streak, Milwaukee has the best record in the majors (10-2) and moved to No. 2 in the ESPN power rankings this week. 

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. After all, it’s April and, if you don’t remember, it snowed out this morning. Nothing is as it seems.

The near opposite happened last year when Milwaukee started 2-8 and everyone gave up on the team. Then it reeled off 10 in a row and everyone hopped back on the bandwagon. They were 11-8 after those wins and followed that up going 6-17.

Things can turn around so quickly.

In the end, the Brewers were 74-88 – eight games better than the lowly Cubs, the worst team in the NL – and 23 games out of first place in the Central Division.

What we know is baseball is a 162-game season and nothing matters until July, August and September and, for a lot of teams, even those months don’t matter – like Milwaukee last year.

This is not to say the Brewers are doomed for mediocrity, but they will come down. They won’t win an 83-percent clip – nobody does.

The reality of it is we don’t know anything about any team, though the 10-game win streak  – which could easily have been 11 or 12 being they lost 5-2 and 2-1 to Atlanta – was against three teams that were in the playoffs last year, including the World Series champion Boston Red Sox.

So, there’s reason to be excited, but it’s a long season and sports are funny sometimes. One year a team is out of this world and the next they’re horrible – and vice versa. The Brewers could that team that comes out of nowhere or the Pirates, Cardinals and Red Sox could all be horrible.

Or, and more likely, it’s April, and baseball in the spring isn’t really baseball.  Milwaukee did this to us to some extent in 2007. They started 46-32, the best record in the NL and had a 6.5-game lead on the Cubs for the division at nearly the halfway point.

They ended 83-79, two games back of the Cubs for the playoffs and the seventh-best record in the NL.

The next year, however, they went to the playoffs.

But, as for this year, how long will it be before Hank the Dog is a bigger story again than the actual Brewers?