Brewers Baseball Project

My Grandma Perry loved the Milwaukee Brewers. I can still see her in the recliner over by the big wooden console stereo, tapping her Carlton 100 into a cut glass ashtray, hollering in exhortation or cussing in despair, depending on how the game was going. She carried her portable radio and its extendable antenna with her into the kitchen, down to the laundry room, and to the backyard when she’d sit in her lawn chair and let the dog run. To this day when I hear a Brewers game playing in another room, or through a screen window, I think of Grandma.

All of this to say, when I was given the opportunity to record a voiceover for the video below, I welcomed it as a fan myself, but I especially welcomed the chance to send one out in memory of the most loyal Brewers fan I ever knew, my late Grandma Perry:

I first started listening to Brewers games in high school. This was the era of manager Harvey Keunn’s “Harvey’s Wallbangers” and their World Series run. I remember listening to a playoff game on the radio in high school English class. But my most distinct memory is of cleaning the sheep barn in the spring, eyes watering from the ammonia, arms tired from wrenching forkfuls of matted manure loose and flinging them into the spreader, but the time passing easily to the sound of Bob Uecker narrating the day’s game on a farm truck radio (must have been the neighbor’s as ours didn’t have a radio). I recall names like Gorman Thomas, Cecil Cooper, Ben Oglivie, Pete Vuckovich, and Sixto Lezcano. Gantner, Yount, Molitor. And freezing at the crack of Ben Oglivie’s bat, then breaking into a huge grin as Bob Uecker’s voice rose to a shout, “Get up! Get up! Get outta here! Gone!”

Anyways, as we say. Regarding these jerseys, my two favorite things are the bobber (symbol of my childhood) and the word FORWARD–Wisconsin’s state motto and one I try to maintain myself. So: Here’s to Grandma Perry, and forward we go.