The Milwaukee Brewers' Claim to Fame: The Sausage Race

The Milwaukee Brewers are one of the smaller market teams in Major League Baseball. They don't attract big name stars. They don't sell out attendance, and they haven't had a winning season in 13 years. Although it has not always been easy to be a fan of the Brewers, one thing that could always be counted on as being pure, mesmerizing and innocent, would be the team's gigantic racing sausages.

It has become a custom, that during the 7th inning stretch of all Brewer home games, four mutated half-man, half meat link creatures make a mad dash for home plate. Regardless of how badly the team is doing, the racing of the Bratwurst, the Italian Sausage, the Polish Sausage, and the Hot Dog are always a sure fire hit with fans, the mafia, and anyone else wiling to bet on the exploits of these fantastic four. Even in our country's toughest times, like a modern day Seabiscuit, we could always look up to these four superwieners as a symbol of our (mostly) American heritage, and show how the Hot Dog was able to embrace the rich diversity of our undercooked and misunderstood brothers from Italy, Poland, and Poland again.

And then, the Chorizo ruined everything.

This "athlete" became the newest member of the racing team in late July of 2006. Although created with the best of intentions, the Chorizo was touted as a "reach out to diversity of Mexican-Americans." This could even be considered positive if the sausage was portrayed as doing positive things to further the Mexican race, such as getting a bank loan, or getting promoted at El Pollo Loco. But sadly, the Chorizo is a Frankenstein amalgamate of all things racist: including ten gallons worth of stupidity atop his head, a kerchief symbolizing robbery, roped around where the neck would be located, and a big, disgusting and smelly shag goatee, resembling the body of a bloated and waterlogged dead rat. Announced with stunning pride, this Chorizo was given its own set of rules. It trained when it wanted to. It ignored authority. It had a stunning lack of respect or compassion for its compotators. It wisped back it's poncho with a stunning lack of observation for the rules and regulations, and revealed a devilish side of play no ballpark could handle. You could already tell, this Chorizo was the Yoko of the racing sausage world.

When it finally made its debut in the final week of July, expectations were high. As the Chorizo took the field, the crowd erupted with joy. But when the Mexicant placed a distant third, a feeling of woe surfed through the crowd, like a bad batch of diseased potato salad. Suddenly, it became clear that the Brewers had missed the mark with this Chorizo. Clearly, it would have been more lucrative for them to employ a young Dominican weenie, who had fought his oppressive government all the way to fighting for his life on a boat made of soda cans, dissolving his bun, but boiling the juiciness of his desire inside. Also overlooked was the possibility of a Kenyan sausage, an impressively resilient African link, who could have ran for hours with ease. But sadly, racism and a desire to win caused the team to choose the lowly street rat Chorizo.

Not since the tragic events of 2003, when Pittsburgh Pirate Randall Simon struck the Italian sausage on the head with his bat, has there been this much uneasiness amongst the team. Although the Chorizo is gone for now, (in the minors getting more seasoning) the impact of the Chorizo can still be felt. The remaining four now seem desperate and angry, almost forgotten about under the cloud of Chorizomania. There have been rumors of reported juicing amongst the team, including reports of popular additives like "the kraut" or "the relish" being applied before races.

If the tailspin of the sausages continues at the current rate, what can we expect to see next year when the Chorizo joins the ranks full time? But there is still hope. Kobayashi, if you are out there, please, we need you now more than ever.