Anybody planning the Milwaukee Road Trip for next June should head over to Brewers.com as soon as possible. The Brew Crew plans a special presale for the matchups they’re viewing as the biggest of the season: Opening Day, the three series against the Cubs, and the weekend against the White Sox.

Wait, the White Sox?

It’s understandable the Brewers want to squeeze as much out of next year’s schedule as possible, and considering their dearth of true rivals it makes sense they would simply declare war on the pocketbooks of visiting fans from the nearest major city. But it seems, quite frankly, almost sad that the only days they have available to gouge fans also happen to be the only days where anyone would otherwise show up. The Cubs have the Cardinals and almost any weekend game for that; the Sox have the Yankees, Red Sox, weekends and most summer weekdays to help them to do the same.

It’s also interesting to note how ticket prices generally double for these “marquee” dates; Bernie’s Terrace, arguably the worsts seats in all of Midwestern baseball, carry a $15 face value while infield box seats jump from $48 to $80. This makes sense if, say, these were age-old rivalries carrying meaning deep into the season with huge stakes on the line but for all intents and purposes, we can more safely say the Brewers’ chances this season are slim and that as cool as interleague play is, a Sox-Brewers showdown in June isn’t exactly the World Series.

Then again, when you only have eleven games worth jacking up prices for, you’ve got to pay the bills somehow. And with MLB bracing itself for fallout from the current economic situation, it would seem wise for any team – and especially a low-payroll, low-drawing one such as the Brewers – to cash in wherever they can.

But seriously, the White Sox? Everyone loves Miller Park, and the Brewers are many a Sox fan’s NL team by default, but. . . the White Sox? This is “marquee” baseball? The one-and-done, two-steps-back 2008 American League Central Champion White Sox against the one-and-done, lost-the-best-pitcher-in-recent-memory 2008 National League Wild Card Champion Milwaukee Brewers?

In all fairness, the Brewers have a pretty lame schedule regarding weekend matchups – no Cardinals, no Mets, and their lone home series against Philadelphia not happening until the last weekend of the season – and their prices pale in comparison to the subtle needling going on at Comiskey and the outright brutality further north at Wrigley, but you would think that a team that’s been hanging around as long as the Brewers have could at least generate enough interest on their own, rather than their biggest draw actually being two teams from another city.

Some might make the argument that the Sox and Brewers had a good rivalry back when the Brewers were still an American League team; those people, of course, would be wrong. They may have instilled some kind of big city elitism in the Sox fan base, or ignited the Napoleon complex of every fan from Waukesha to Wautoma, but rivalry? That seems like a stretch; the Brewers and Sox were never good at the same time and – more importantly – weren’t even in the same division. Milwaukee, as it always did and as it still does, simply stood as a fun city, one of beer and brats and hilarity along the Kinnickinnic River.

But seriously, the White Sox?