What do the '82 Brewers think of the '26 Brewers and their World Series run?

MILWAUKEE -- Bud Selig’s clearest memory of the flight home from Game 7 of the 1982 World Series is walking to the back of the plane and finding his young shortstop, Robin Yount, in a heap. Nobody ached more than Yount about losing Game 7 to the Cardinals.

“I remember seeing him sitting by himself, just distraught, like we all were,” Selig said. “I’ll say it again -- and I got [former St. Louis manager] Whitey Herzog to admit it. We were better than the Cardinals! We were better than them.”

He pauses.

“But enough about me,” Selig said. “What do the guys have to say?”

By “the guys,” he means Harvey’s Wallbangers, the home run-hitting, beer-swilling Brew Crew that in 1982 captivated Milwaukee and gave the city its first World Series since the Braves days. The guys are happy, it goes without saying. Especially Yount, who was the first and only choice to throw a ceremonial first pitch before Friday’s Game 1 with Selig, his old boss and the Brewers’ founder, at his side.

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Then it’s Paul Molitor in Game 2 on Saturday, as the Brewers link past and present in a city that hasn’t got to celebrate a World Series championship since the 1957 Braves beat the Yankees.

The first step was getting back to the World Series, and they were all watching. Jim Gantner said he was watching at home near Holy Hill, about 25 miles northwest of Milwaukee. Selig watched at home in the suburb of Bayside with his wife, Sue. Yount had just returned from a cruise in time to watch Games 3 and 4 of the NLCS.

When Jackson Chourio squeezed the final out to send the Brewers to the World Series, Selig’s first call came from Brewers owner Mark Attanasio. The second call came from Yount.

They talked about the chance to see the team write a different ending to the story this time.

“I don’t concentrate on the hurt side,” Yount said. “I’ve said it was the greatest time of my career, but also the worst time. The worst time was all the result of a single game. The best part was all of the work and fun and everything we did to put ourselves in that position.

“But when you get that close to achieving a goal that you’ve set since you were a little kid if you ever got the opportunity -- and that would be to win a World Series -- and you get within one game of accomplishing that, yeah, it stings. It hurts.

“I’m not going to lie, I’ll never get over it until the Brewers win one.”

He wasn’t alone. If Yount is the Brewers’ No. 1 fan, then his former teammates are right behind him.

“In my 80 years on this planet,” said Larry Hisle, the star outfielder who had to miss most of the ‘82 season because of a shoulder injury, “I have never been more impressed with a team.”

Cecil Cooper was watching, too. He played the Garrett Mitchell role in ‘82, delivering the go-ahead RBI in the League Championship Series clincher.

“I thought that [manager Pat Murphy] said it really well when he said that he had a team of gamers, and [the Dodgers] had a team of Hall of Famers,” Cooper said “They competed every at-bat. The kids really competed.”

“For me, I was with the club all season, so I got to see a lot of what this club did,” said former Brewers pitcher Jerry Augustine, who is part of the radio broadcast team. “The one thing the ‘82 club had was a group of guys that had respect for each other and played the game the way it was supposed to be played. This team is exactly the same. They respect each other and they go out and play hard.”

Are there similarities to this year’s club?

“What I would say is the grit and determination of this team is what I see that relates the 1982 team and this team,” Yount said. “These guys are relentless. But we played a different game. It’s really challenging, because you get this question a lot: Compare the two teams. The reality is that the game itself is so different because it was 44 years ago -- a pretty good number, Henry Aaron. It’s really, really difficult to compare different eras of the game.

“But there’s no question that the reason they’re playing the game is to win day in and day out. You can see that clearly. And we were certainly that same type of team.”

This year’s Brewers will get their chance beginning Friday night. When Selig and Yount take the field for the ceremonial first pitch, Selig plans to let the former MVP do all the work.

“When you’re 92, you try to do as little pitching as possible,” Selig said. “We’ve been looking forward to doing this for a long, long time.”