AP/Morry Gash

AP/Morry Gash

It is the wisdom of the sport of baseball that’s been in place practically since Abner Doubleday did his thing in upstate New York.

Teams are going to win 54 games, they’re going to lose 54 games…it’s what they do with the remaining 54 games that will tell the tale of their year.

The Milwaukee Brewers are no exception.

So the baseball fan, that dyed-in-the-wool-eats-drinks-sleeps-nothing-else-matters kind of fan, has to ride the waves of a long season like surfers off the Great Barrier Reef.

You are going to go from the deep, black-dog of depression doldrums to the absolute euphoria of a moon landing.

Sometimes these feelings are night to night, but sometimes they take over in the same inning even occasionally separated by a single pitch.

Forget about growing a second skin and definitely stay out of the kitchen…there’s no way you can take the heat.

Take, for example, the last dozen or so games the Crew have played.

First, they sweep the Cleveland Indians: good.

Then they get swept by the Detroit Tigers: bad.

Then they drop two of three to the rival Minnesota Twins at home: real bad.

The Brewmen took the first two against the San Francisco Giants, outscoring them 12-7: okay. Then the left-coasters avert the sweep when cobwebs form on Milwaukee’s lumber rack…winnng 7-0.

That was a game against the hated and now all-too-often feared ‘pitcher making his first start.’

The X-factor, never having faced this particular arm before, has been particularly hard on Milwaukee, for some reason.

That brings us to the final game at MillerPark against the New York Mets.

The Brewers won the first two, including a 6-3 nod in game two against multiple Cy Young Award Winner Johann Santana before letting another sweep slip away, losing 1-0: good, but could have been better.

The Crew made NY’s Mike Pelfrey look like a Cy Young winner himself and squandered 12 strikeouts by Yovani Gallardo in the loss.

That is just one snapshot, one two-week glimpse into this longest of seasons in sports.

Ebb & flow. Yin & Yang. Give & take. The old see-saw. Newton’s law of gravity…you get the picture.

Not unlike the players on the field, the baseball fan has to learn the art of balance like Olga Korbut on the gymnastics beam or the Zen Master himself, LA Lakers Coach Phil Jackson.

Get off the trampoline.

Don’t get too high when the Brewers are riding high. Don’t get too low when the bats go silent and your starters get whiplash from turning to watch hanging sliders head toward the retractable roof.

The fan of the Brewers or any team in Wisconsin would do well to adopt this philosophy. One could even tear a page out of the Chicago Cubs fans’ book. You can always go back to hating them later.

They adopt a ‘wait ‘til next year’ attitude during spring training at Ho-Ho-KamPark in the desert of Arizona.

If they didn’t, there would be no way they could survive the Curse of the Goat or the Steve Bartman-type incidents.

You just know something else is on the horizon.

What makes it fun for those of us that like that particular type of train wreck, is that they always come out of nowhere and when you least expect it.

So buckle-up, Brewer fans, it’s going to be a wild ride, or a Wild Card ride if they don’t continue to hold off the arch-enemies from the city of the Arch.

Don’t run out and burn Manager Ken Macha if the Crew happens to get swept in July. Neither should you start icing the champagne down when Milwaukee strings together four or five in a row – in August.

Either way, it’s going to fun now that the Brewers have quenched the thirst after the 26-year drought ended last September.

Problem is, memories are short and it’s always going to be a case of: “What have you done for me lately!”