New Chicago Cubs Pitcher Rips Rival Fans After Losing Game
Normally, when one thinks of the Milwaukee Brewers, one does not think of rabid, passionate fans who incite bitter rivalries like Red Sox-Yankees, Cubs-Cardinals or Giants-Dodgers.
Indeed, as SB Nation’s Jon Bois tweeted Sunday, the Brewers inspire a “negligible level of residual opinion.”
This did not stop the Chicago Cubs’ Cole Hamels from taking potshots at Milwaukee fans after the two teams, separated by just four games atop the NL Central standings, played a tightly contested Labor Day battle that ended 4-3 in favor of the home team and their legion of Sconnies in the seats.
Or at least you’d think there’d be a bunch of Wisconsin folks. Hamels, however, noticed a suspicious amount of Cubs merchandise adorning the fans during the team’s “road” game an hour-and-a-half north by car from Chicago.
“When you have the majority of Cubs fans in the stands, I don’t know if that’s a rivalry,” Hamels said after the game. “They aren’t going to like me for the comment, but look at the ticket sales. When they start to get a little closer and their fans sell out, then I think that’s kind of the understanding (of a rivalry). But Cubs fans travel well.”
To be fair, Milwaukee isn’t a baseball dead zone like Miami (average attendance in 2018: 10,053) or Tampa Bay (14,734).
The Brewers are drawing a respectable 34,807 fans a game this season, 10th in baseball behind the Red Sox and ahead of the Nationals.
Heard @ColeHamels remarks about the Brewers/Cubs rivalry, he’s dead wrong and misguided. @Brewers fans are as passionate as it gets, plain and simple. Despite being the smallest market in baseball, the team consistently ranks in the top 10 in attendance, in both good times & bad
— Don August (@DonAugust38) September 4, 2018
Hamels played for the Phillies at a time when they routinely drew 45,000 fans and traveled well, often showing up in droves in Washington when the Phils would play the Nationals or even in New York when the enemy squad was the Mets.
The familiarity between those days and Monday’s game wasn’t lost on the hurler.
“They have great players, but in this game of baseball, you want to see the fans in the stands,” Hamels said. “To be able to have the Cubs fans travel in the masses that they do, it’s great to see.”
Brewers team staff have tried to stem the tide of incoming Cubs fans for the rivalry games, even going so far in 2017 as to restrict ticket sales to Wisconsin residents only.
Whether because of Cubs fans calling in favors from friends to the north or ticket resellers doing what ticket resellers do, that effort didn’t work.
When the Cubs took a 3-2 lead on an Anthony Rizzo big fly in the eighth on Monday, if you were listening to the game on the radio, you’d have thought it was at Wrigley Field the way the crowd went bonkers.
There were 44,462 fans at Miller Park on Monday, packed into standing room only, and there certainly were plenty of Brewers fans among them who were more than willing and able to cheer when the Cubs tried to turn a double play and failed when Christian Yelich beat the throw to first and Keon Broxton scored from third, ending the ballgame in the bottom of the ninth on a rare walk-off fielder’s choice.
But the mere fact that the moment stood out as unusual rather than being the expected result of a win from the home team wasn’t lost on Hamels.
“That’s the nature of where it is,” Hamels said, referring to the rivalry. “It’s probably not going to sit too well with them.”
Most fans of the #Brewers know this already, but just so we're clear: the fan presence at Miller Park during @Brewers-Cubs games doesn't correlate to the nature of the "rivalry." https://t.co/VBDk0sgWcD
— JR Radcliffe (@JRRadcliffe) September 4, 2018
Milwaukee leads the wild-card race in the National League, and it seems likely that even if the Brewers catch the Cubs for the division title, both teams will be in the playoffs.
And if they meet in October, we’ll see if there’s any room in the ballpark for Cubs fans when the games are played at Miller Park.
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