There are a lot of qualities that are necessary for a sports team to be a good, competitive team.

The team needs good athletes, first and foremost. You need to be relatively free of injuries. You need to have some depth. You need to have good support from your fans and from the non-playing staff of the organization. You need a good manager or coach and coaching staff. You need to avoid too many highs and too many lows.

But another thing you need, and it's one of the most important things of all, is confidence. You never see a championship team that has played a season without having genuine confidence.

It's hard to define confidence. But it's like what a Supreme Court Justice said about pornography: "I can't define it but I know it when I see it."

We have all seen phony, or hopeful, confidence. The Miami Heat is a perfect example. Lots of talk about how they were going to win, while so many questions were raised about the effectiveness of this team. There were obviously questions in the minds of the players.

All that confidence was just so much talk. When they took the court, and played the game, you could watch their body language and see that confidence was on the wane. Despite the bragging, they got pushed around like also-rans. They couldn't do the little things that make champions.

Now take a look at the Milwaukee Brewers.

Not the Brewers of the early season, when it looked like nine strangers took the field each game along with a manager who must have wondered what the names were of all those guys.

But, the Brewers as they climb to the end of June. This is a team that has the kind of quiet confidence that you see in champions.

Nobody on this team is climbing on any mountaintop shouting about how great they are. Nobody goes on talk radio or that abysmal Fox post game show to let everyone know that they think they are unbeatable. Despite their recent hiccup on the road, nobody seems to panic on this team.

About as exciting they get is when their manager says "we have the chance to be a very good team." Or when he says, "I really like how we play the game."

This has all the earmarks of something very special. Players like Rickie Weeks look like they are finally reacing all that wonderful potential people talked about. Catcher Jonathan Lucroy has surprised everyone. Players off the bench always seem to be providing significant contributions.

Just as everyone expected, Prince Fielder raises his free agent price on an almost daily basis. If he keeps this up he may set a record for free agent signings. And Ryan Braun is worth every penny the club lavished on him.

Then there is the pitching. And what I'm talking about here is the starting pitching, not set up men or middle guys or closers.

I'm talking about the five guys who start - Zack Grienke, Shaun Marcum, Yovani Gallardo, Randy Wolf and Chris Narveson.

They can all pitch. Some may be a little better than others, but they can all pitch. And with guys like this on the mound, the rest of the team knows they will be in almost every game. A couple of hits, some runs, and winning a game is alwys within reach.

You get a sense of it with these Brewers. They seemd to have the kind of confidence that you see in the way they go about their business. The way they walk. The way they back up plays. The way they talk. Confidence and fun. It's an amazing combination.

And, I hate to say it, but this is what we were led to believe would happen this year. We were primed to expect a baseball team that was going to make a run. A serious run. As long as this kind of confidence stays high, we might all reap the rewards.