As the electric hayride that is the baseball season struggles to an end for the Brewers, a great deal of attention has turned to the fans of the club, who have filled the cavern at Miller Park as never before.

One of the more articulate discussions was by Drew Olson, senior editor here at OnMilwaukee.com. I respect him as I do few other writers. I liked him even before I knew him and his examination of the fans was typical for him, full of insight and maturity, the kind of thing you want to read a couple of times.

One of the planks in his platform was that there are a number of fans that are missing out on the ride because they are tense, uptight and bitter. That may help explain the booing and the never-ending Yost complaints.

He expressed amazement at the fan that has waited 26 years for meaningful baseball in September and now can't stand to watch.

Last week, on the eve of the Phillies series, I filled in for 540 ESPN radio host Steve "The Homer" True and we spent a couple of hours talking about fright.

That's right, fright.

We talked about how people are frightened that the Brewers aren't going to make it into the playoffs.

As B. F. Skinner once proved, conditioning is a remarkably powerful influence on behavior. And for 26 years, we have been conditioned to expect the worst.

So, while we may hope for the best -- for a miracle and victory -- at our most intimate levels, we still harbor the fear that our team will fall short of its goal.

Because of this fear, this sense of impending dread, we do what comes naturally. We try to protect ourselves from potentially shattering impact of failure. In other words, it goes against all of our instincts to actually believe in our hopes.

Think about that math class you had in high school. You screwed around the whole semester and on the evening you had to show the grades to your parents, you began to create a shell to protect yourself from the dread. You got angry and complained about nonsense. But, you weren't going to let yourself be open to a broken heart because of a bad grade and parental disapproval.

That's kind of what's going on, I think, with lots of Brewer fans now. We aren't going to be in full-throated roar because we are afraid that the sound will just come back and crush us under its weight.

And while we are prepared to have our hearts broken, we don't want them ripped out of our chest, tossed into a gutter and run over by a caravan of DPW trucks. We want something left.

The big problem here, I think, is that this fan reticence has an impact on the players. Athletes will tell you that the excitement of fans translates to the field and helps get them going. I think the converse is also true. When the fans boo, or sit on their hands, that has an impact on the players as well.

They may all say that every game is important and there's no use in pushing the panic button. But some games are more important than others. Like the games the Brewers are playing now are among the most important in their long unsuccessful history. Very, very important.

The sad thing is that recognition of importance does not assure any kind of superlative effort, either by the players or the fans.