It's not exactly saying a lot for your franchise when your wife sincerely questioned your decision-making on the issue, but Brewers' owner Mark Attanasio took a leap of faith that's beginning to pay off: His friends told him he was absolutely nuts. His wife, Debbie, figured he was joking or going through a midlife crisis.Despite all of that criticism, the Brewers might just be making a long-term turnaround. They've got one of the coolest ballparks in the sport, a fanbase far more rabid that debunked ratings numbers gave it credit for, and, oh yeah -- the best record in baseball this year. Not bad for such a highly derided purchase.
"The Milwaukee Brewers?" Mark Attanasio kept hearing over and over from friends. " 'You want to buy a Major League Baseball team, and the team you want is the Brewers?' "
"I'm not sure anyone understood," says Attanasio, 49, in his third season as Brewers owner while living in Los Angeles and running an investment-management firm responsible for $150 billion in assets.
"Even my wife said, 'You're not really serious are you?' Then when she saw the look on my face, she said, 'Can we really afford this?' Now she's watching the games with me. She just draws the line when we're in Europe and won't stay up until 5 in the morning with me watching the games on the Internet."
Previously on the FanHouse:
The Brewers Just Got a Lot More Popular
The Best Record in Baseball Belongs to the Brewers
