No, this isn't going to be about the starters ability to get out of the 6th inning without giving up a bevy of home runs or the offenses inability to take a pitch the other way. Maybe some other time on that stuff.

I just finished reading The Big Book of Baseball Blunders by Rob Neyer and it was a great read. He runs down some of the most notorious blunders in baseball history as well as some not so infamous moments that mattered as well. It's a quick read and well worth the time if you're a fan of baseball history.

Anyhow, there were a few noteworthy mentions of baseball in Milwaukee in there, including:

* A whole chapter on Fred Haney's lineup decisions in the 1959 season, particularly his giving Frank Torre so many AB's and his inability to settle on a second basemen. Bill James was pretty hard on Haney for that season in some other writings, but Neyer actually comes in with a half hearted defense of Haney for the results of the season. He also cites bad luck in that their run differential was significantly better than the Dodgers, who won the pennant.

* There is a small sidebar in a sub-chapter on bad trades on the fact that the Brewers and Phillies had a Mike Caldwell for Ryne Sandberg trade worked out prior to the 1982 season, but the Dalton backed out. Caldwell turned out to be an important part of the rotation in 1982, his ERA was slightly below league average but he did eat up 258 innings, so it's hard to say this was a terrible decision. Still, one wonders how much better the team would have been with Sandberg replacing a light hitting Jim Gantner.

* In that same chapter on bad trades, he cites the Sheffield trade to the Padres. Neyer fully acknowledges his, ahem, differences of opinion, with the Brewers front office. Part of the critique is simply that they drafted him presumably without fully understanding his personality and the second is that the return they got back was totally out of line with his considerable potential. Hard to argue, though it is tough to find out that much about a player before the draft and his value was hurt by the fact that he so clearly wanted out of Milwaukee. I would call it a perfect storm of circumstances, some they could control and some they couldn't, that led to that blunder.