Inside the park home runs are not a common occurrance in Major League Baseball and Milwaukee Brewers’ outfielder Ryan Braun was ohhhhhhh so close to getting his very first one. He could’ve had it quite easily actually, but for the little tumble you are about to see Braun take after he rounds third and attempts to make his way home. Poor guy, I would almost feel bad for him if I wasn’t laughing so hard right now.

As the great Maxwell Smart would’ve  said, “Missed it by that much.”

To add insult to injury, the Brewers lost the game to the St. Louis Cardinals by a score of 8-3.

Random sports trivia while we’re talking about inside the park home runs, who is the MLB leader in inside the park home runs? A player named Jesse Burkett with 55 inside the park home runs. Burkett played for the Giants, Spiders, Perfectos, Cardinals, Browns and, his last team, the Boston Americans from 1890-1905. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.  Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner are both tied for 3rd with 46 inside the parkers. Honestly, no one on the list of top 25 inside the park home run hitters was born in the 1900s. Lost art I guess…or fielding has gotten a LOT better these days.

Trivia from Baseball-Almanac.com

Look, I know we all love a good story and this year’s Pittsburgh Pirates are certainly that since after years and years of penny pinching and trading away talent for nothing, but c’mon this is not a team the entire nation should be rallying over and here is why:

Pittsburgh Major Sports Championships in Last 20 years:

• Penguins – 3
• Steelers – 2

Total Championships for Pittsburgh’s 3 major sports teams (baseball, hockey, football) = 16

That’s right, I’m not rooting for the Pirates soley because Pittsburgh fans are spoiled with the success of their other teams and need to have this one loser of a team stay a loser just so they can experience some of what the rest of America feels on a regular basis (especially this Washington DC sports fan).  Bitter much?  YOU BET I AM!

This is not rooting for some loveable loser of a team for a city that hasn’t won anything. No, this is rooting for a loser of a team that used to be a winner of a team like 40 years ago and that resides in a city of other consistent sports champions. The Penguins and the Steelers both won championships in the same year in 2008 for crying out loud. This is not a city we can or should all rally behind, America should be as bitter towards them as we are New York and Boston.

Why isn’t everyone rooting this hard for the Milwaukee Brewers? This is a baseball team that has never won a World Series. That is an underdog team you we should be getting behind right there. The last real championship this city has celebrated was in 1971 when the Bucks won the NBA championship, that is, unless you count the Packers as a Milwaukee team, which means they last celebrated a championship last year.

That Packers’ Super Bowl win definitely hurts their case, but only just a little bit.  The fact alone that the Brewers have never won anything, ever, is reason enough that the Brewers should be the underdog team that everyone should be rooting for this season and NOT the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Both cities are blue collar, both cities have awesome ballparks their teams play in, both cities have excellent beer options to choose from but one city is a bit more deserving of America’s fandom than the other. I say, root for Milwaukee this MLB season if you have to choose one underdog loser of a team to root for, not the Pirates! America loves an underdog and the Brewers are the real underdog here.