Hang in there, Brewers fans, help is on the way. Before you punch your monitor and walk away -- we know you've heard that countless times in the last decade -- step back and let us tell you why. A new sheriff is in town. And after nine months, Brewers CEO Ulice Payne has a plan -- a baseball and a business plan -- to get the Crew back on track.

We caught up with Payne this month at Miller Park and found that he is a man who really does get it, and his experience as a Milwaukee business leader, attorney and former athlete, gives him the credentials to build a winner. It's hard not to be excited when sitting down and talking to Payne; his honesty, charisma and intelligence practically beam from this gentle giant. Read for yourself in this latest edition of Milwaukee Talks:

OMC: It's been almost a year since you took over the helm of the Milwaukee Brewers. How is the team being run differently?

UP: Well, I wasn't here before, but I do hear a little bit from those who were here. We continue to look to improve. There were a lot of good things about ways the ball club was run. There were some things that needed to change. We think we're trying to do it better. Is it exact? I don't think it's exact. We do think that we've established some core objectives and everything goes to those core objectives. Everybody in the operation knows, and we reaffirm on a regular basis, what the core objectives are. That may be the biggest change here.

OMC: What are those objectives?

UP: We've got three, pretty simply. One is to maximize attendance. For a baseball club, 60 percent of our revenue comes from the home gate -- admissions, which drives your parking, your food and beverages, your merchandise, which brings a value to your signage in the building. How do you do that? There's a strategy, which we'll talk about.

The second objective is to rekindle the emotional connection between the fans and the club, because without the fans, you have no franchise. And the fans must be emotionally connected, because that's what sports are about. Fans like to see their guys do what the fans want them to do and fans like to win and to watch players who try hard.

The third is maximizing the benefits of the new labor agreement. The new agreement has some revenue sharing provisions, some debt restrictions and some provisions that relate to the maximum salaries of teams. If we manage our business properly, we will be the direct beneficiary of that labor agreement. So we can't just lose money and borrow money. We can’t just agree to pay our players big-time contracts without some consequence.

OMC: It sounds to me like you're running the Brewers like a business. Is that because you have so much business experience and you're not making all the decisions with just your heart?

UP: We all have different experiences we bring to the table. This is the business of baseball, but it's still a business. I've been fortunate to be able to sit on the corporate boards and advise clients as a corporate lawyer about business issues. So I do want to use all those experiences here. I do think, from the fans' perspective, too, that they like to feel like there's some ownership in their sports teams. Whether it's the Chicago Bears fans or the Green Bay Packers fans or the Raiders fans, they like to feel they know about their club. They know the payroll, they know the president, they know the good ticket prices, the TV information. That's what I want to bring. Maybe we're a little more open about it. I do think it's important, because if I let you know about our business, you will support our business.

OMC: Earlier this summer, you traded Alex Sanchez and released Jeffrey Hammonds. At that moment, I think Brewers fans knew that this was your team. What kind of message did those moves send to the players and to the fans?

UP: We made a promise to the fans in the fall. A "contract with our fans," we called it. We can't necessarily win every game, but we can try to win every game. We found, by listening to our fans, what they were most disappointed with in the previous year. They thought the players didn't care. They didn't live here, you didn't see them in the off-season. They would give up if they were down 2-0 in the second inning. The first thing we said was we are going to be one of the hardest working teams in the Central Division. And anybody who wasn't playing hard, wasn't going to play.

Lo and behold, sometimes you make statements you don't realize are going to come right back on you. Within about 60 days, the Alex Sanchez situation arose. Coaches worked with him and talked to him. The general manager talked to him. But we had to walk the talk, you know what I mean? And we did. Hammonds was the same way. Jeffrey is a nice guy, but he had a history of injuries. Here's my highest-paid player, and he was out over an ankle sprain. In the meantime, the players who were playing hard brought some success. So it was a question of keeping him on because we were paying him, or keeping him on because he was helping the team. If he wasn't helping the team, and we didn't think he would, even though we were paying him, it was better for the team.

OMC: On paper, the Brewers are marginally better than they were last year, and that's not saying very much.

UP: No.

OMC: But baseball guys see a team that is playing harder, has better morale and team leadership. Does that come from Ned Yost and Doug Melvin?

UP: I talked to the players in Spring Training in a closed clubhouse session, and I know Ned and Doug have done the same. We have a baseball plan. We're trying to share it with our players and our fans. When you lose 106 games, like we did last year, and when you have 10 consecutive losing seasons, something had to change! No one could claim that everything was going well here. What you're seeing is the effect of setting that tone early in the season, and sticking to it. People usually respond to that environment.