CC, Sheets recall Crew's '08 run

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy’s Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MILWAUKEE -- While continuing their push for the playoffs, the Brewers are preparing to look back at the special season that began the current era of success for the franchise.

CC Sabathia will make a rare visit to American Family Field to throw a ceremonial first pitch before the Brewers-Padres game on Friday, Aug. 25, which will be followed by Ben Sheets’ induction into the Brewers Walk of Fame on Saturday, Aug. 26. Those two pitchers share memories from 2008 when Sabathia arrived in a midseason trade one week before Sheets became the first and only pitcher in franchise history to start an All-Star Game, and together they helped Milwaukee reach the postseason for the first time in a generation.

“I always say that was my favorite summer I ever had playing in the big leagues,” Sabathia said this week.

Sheets had a 3.09 ERA in 31 starts that year to help position the Brewers to make a midseason play for Sabathia, who, making start after start on short rest even though free-agent riches were on the line at year’s end, finished with one of the best performances ever by a Brewers pitcher in the regular season finale against the Cubs.

Sadly, by that day Sheets was already sidelined with an arm injury that altered the course of his career.

And unfortunately, Sabathia had just about emptied his tank.

“It was something I always thought about,” Sheets told me, Sophia Minnaert and Tim Dillard for this week’s episode of the Brewers Unfiltered podcast. “It was the type of pitcher I was, for some reason, in the big moments -- the Opening Days, All-Star Games, when scouts used to come, the Gold Medal game -- if I was 92-95, on those days I would be 94-97. I always played up a little bit. That was something that was very fortunate. I always thought if I can just get myself to the postseason, I could have one of those postseasons. …

“A lot of that stuff doesn’t matter unless it’s when the fans want it, and unfortunately, sports don’t work that way. If the guys who had first halves didn’t have big first halves, would we have got CC Sabathia? Would we have made that move? It takes the whole team.”

The move was agreed upon on a Sunday night, July 6, 2008, when Brewers GM Doug Melvin pushed all of his chips to the center of the table by sending a stable of prospects -- Michael Brantley, a player to be named later in the deal, would prove to be the best of them -- to Cleveland for Sabathia.

It would prove the best or second-best midseason trade in Brewers history, with the 1982 acquisition of future Hall of Famer Don Sutton also in the discussion. Sabathia hustled to town so he could make not one, but two starts before the All-Star break, and he won in bunches, going 11-2 with a 1.65 ERA in 17 regular-season starts. Seven of them were complete games, including three shutouts.

So beloved was he in the community, Sabathia recalled arriving home in Brookfield, Wis., after games and finding that someone had left him a plate of cookies.

"I went to the mound every single time knowing that I was going to win those games,” Sabathia said. “Driving to the ballpark on that last game of the season, I remember telling my cousin, 'Get ready to celebrate. We're going to win.' I never felt that before in my career. That's why I always say I wanted the ball so much because I knew I was going to win those games."

Sabathia’s agent was furious because he was set to be the top free-agent pitcher on the market at season’s end. But Sabathia reiterated yet again this week that it was his call to begin a stretch of starts on three days’ rest as the Brewers crept toward a Wild Card berth.

They made it on the final day, with Sabathia going the distance against the Cubs in his third straight start on short rest. After he and the rest of the Milwaukee crowd waited out a Marlins win over the Mets, the Brewers had the NL Wild Card.

"The last three weeks of the season, every game was a playoff game," Sabathia said. "Everything was magnified. Everything was huge.”

The air came out of the balloon after that. Against the eventual World Series champion Phillies in the NL Division Series, Cole Hamels pitched eight scoreless innings in a Game 1 win over young right-hander Yovani Gallardo, who was just coming back from a knee injury. In Game 2, Sabathia gave up five earned runs on six hits without getting through four innings.

The Brewers won Game 3 with Dave Bush on the mound -- the first postseason game in Milwaukee since the 1982 World Series -- but fell in Game 4 behind Jeff Suppan. Sheets could only watch.

“It would have been nice to get Yo-Yo back [earlier] and had CC, myself and Yovani pitch in the playoffs,” Sheets said. “But you also played against the World Champions that year. You don’t know how it would have ended.

“On a personal level, I wish I had an opportunity to play in that but it just wasn’t in the cards. I would do it all over again. I’d go try to pitch hurt, regardless if you told me I could make $100 million if I stopped pitching. I would still go out there today and try it.”

Craig Counsell, a player in 2008 and now Milwaukee’s manager, has long wondered how far the Brewers could have gone in ‘08 had all three of those pitchers been at the height of their powers at the start of October.

He -- and we -- will never know.

But in a couple of weekends, fans will once again say thanks for the memories. Tickets remain for both the Aug. 25 and 26 games.

“The team was ready to end that drought,” Sabathia said, “and I feel like I just came in and gave everybody -- myself included -- the confidence to take it to the next level.”

“The 2004 season was one of my favorite seasons and the ‘08 season was a great season, too,” Sheets said. “As a team, we finally reached what we were striving for after so many bad years.”