CC Sabathia was far from perfect, and for the first seven innings of Wednesday’s game, so, as usual, were the Brewer bats. But frame number 8 was the charm, as Milwaukee completed the rally from down 3-1 for a critical victory in front of 30,124 fans at Miller Park. The Brewers are headed to Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cincinnati for the most brutal, and final, roadtrip of 2008, so had they been swept by the lowly Reds, morale would have been dangerously low. Thanks to Tony Gwynn Jr. and (more importantly) Mike Cameron, another crushing loss was flipped around into an emphatic 4-3 victory. Down 1, J.J. Hardy started things off with a single, and Ryan Braun followed with a walk. Prince Fielder hit a sharp liner to left that fell for a single and loaded the bases for Gwynn, who grounded into a productive double play that tied the game at 3-3. Then, bucking the recent trend of Milwaukee hitters failing to come up in the clutch, Mike Cameron was as clutch as he could be, lining a 2-strike pitch with 2 outs to score Braun from third. Salomon Torres would have no more Cincinnati heroics at his expense, and he wiped out the three men to greet him in the ninth with three strikeouts. Both close-trailing Wild Card teams, Philadelphia and St. Louis, lost, so Milwaukee earned themselves a little more breathing room heading to the City of Brotherly Love.
Offensive MVP: Mike Cameron (1-3/1R/1RBI/1BB/1K)
Pitching MVP: Salomon Torres (1IP/0H/0ER/0BB/3SO/0HR/Save-27th)
Alex’s Take:
This one was not pretty. Milwaukee scored half of their 4 runs off of errors, but hey, they did come through in the clutch against a good pitcher in David Weathers. This was a badly needed victory, but only the next seven days will tell whether or not the 2008 Milwaukee Brewers have a legitimate chance at ending Brew City’s 26 year postseason drought.











