Brewers 7, Red Sox 5
Brewers now 40-30 (2nd)
Box Score | Season Schedule
BOSTON — Another day, another Brewers win. Another impressive win. Another powerful win.
What else can you say about this team? Three games down against the AL East-leading Red Sox at Fenway Park, three wins for the visiting Brewers. They’ve scored 27 runs on 41 hits, including eight home runs.
Silly.
The star of the mash fest continues to be Ben Oglivie, who slugged his seventh home run in seven days, giving him an AL-leading 19 on the season. “On fire” doesn’t begin to describe how hot Oglivie is right now. He has 12 hits and 12 RBI in his last 26 at bats. Silly.
Gorman Thomas also hit two today, giving him three on the series and 17 on the season. The Brewers now have a league-leading 99 long balls on the season. They hit the ball hard.
What more can be said about this team?
Well, we can talk about how they were eight games back just a couple of weeks ago before they won nine of their last 10 games against the Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers, all but the three Yankees games being on the road. They are now two games back. We can talk about how they are 17-6 under manager Harvey Kuenn. And we can fawn over their home run power some more. But that’s been done.
How about we talk about the pitching? Despite the final score, mound work was actually a major reason for today’s win. Unlike the first two games when the Brewers allowed 15 hits each time, Bob McClure was in complete control through seven innings. He had allowed one run on four hits through that point, having had streaks of seven and 11 consecutive batters retired.
Then the Red Sox broke through for four runs in the eighth to make things somewhat interesting before Dwight Bernard shut the door. But for the most part, this game was owned by Milwaukee from the start.
The only complaint Brewers fans can have is that their players continue to get little respect from the rest of the league’s fans. No Brewer leads his position in the fan voting. Not even Robin Yount, in the most obvious choice of obvious choices, as he continues to trail Bucky Dent, who is on track to be the worst shortstop ever to be voted into an All-Star Game.
Bahhh. But that’s a meaningless game. The Brewers will just keep winning the ones that matter. And we’ll keep smiling.
Game Notes: A decision will be made tomorrow on whether second baseman Jim Gantner will be placed on the DL with a sore right shoulder suffered 10 days ago against Detroit … The Brewers have hit back-to-back home runs 11 times this season, bringing them to within five of the MLB record of 16 set by the 1977 Red Sox. The NL record of 12 was set by the 1956 Reds.