Milwaukee - Montreal Throwdown!

The Milwaukee Brewers are three time reigning NL North division champions, their former divisional whipping boy, the Montreal Expos, bounced them from the playoffs last year and won the World Series, and are putting the hammer down early on the Brew Crew in season 4.  Who is the best?  The folks in Milwaukee would have you believe it is their team, based on past performance and American elitism over their Canadian rivals.  The Expos fans point to the scoreboard and a shiny trophy sitting atop their webpage designating their championship status.  Since neither party is willing to admit that their team is better or worse than the other, The MLB World blog has devised a method to determine who is the best, the 1st Annual MLB Blog Baseball Test of Ultimate Awesomeness.

Challenge #1 - Stadium Experience
--This is a shoo in victory for the Brewers.  They have a sausage race, which really is enough to end the conversation.  But they also have a nice new stadium, better food, a caring fan base, and a sweet logo.  The Expos meanwhile clearly have the cooler city in Montreal, but their stadium is a dump, and the three fans who show up have little or nothing to experience.
Edge: Milwaukee

Challenge #2 - Owners Pocketbooks
--Once again the Brewers easily take this competition, with a 99 million dollar payroll compared to Montreals 20 million spent, nearly an 80 million dollar difference.  This leads other owners around the league to wonder just what is ekoontz doing with all that revenue sharing cash he has been getting, as it certainly isn't going into the payroll.  Unnamed sources around the league say that ekoontz's wife has bought every item from the Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog, including the 1 million dollar Dancing Fountain from WET, and the $420,000 International Flower Show, as well as a private magic show from Siegfried and Roy (tigers included) and Criss Angel, Mindfreak.
Edge: Milwaukee (Although the author would like to point out that nothing says rich like a personal fountain)

Challenge #3 - Winning
--The Brewers have more wins in franchise history and three division titles, and a NL pennant.  The Expos have no division titles, less wins, but a World Series championship.  Montreal hired Charlie Sheen to host the World Series afterparty.  Even though he was drunk/passed out/high as a kite one hour into it, that is #winning.
Edge: Montreal

Challenge #4 - Competitions of Strength
--This one proved to be a tight matchup, as four members from each team were selected to participate in classic Worlds Strongest Man style feats of strength.  The Woman Lift went to the Expos, as Manny Martin was able to pulley lift 17 stone worth of ladies, while Steven Newfield of the Brewers was only able to lift 14 stone.  In the Keg Toss, Alex Gomez of the Brewers crushed his competition, leveling the score.  But Cy Oliver and Hal Purcell of the Expos easily won the Semi Truck Pull and the Hercules Hold over their Brewers counterparts.
Edge: Montreal

Challenge #5 - Chess Boxing
--This one turned out to be a cakewalk for the Expos Che-Bang Shigetoshi, who used his 3rd Dan blackbelt skills in Taekwondo to make short work of the Brewers Haywood Cannon.  Cannon also had the misfortune of making a critical error in misplaying a pawn breakthrough, allowing Shigetoshi to capitalize with his knight to force an early check, granting the advantage for a brutal punch to the midsection that Cannon couldn't recover from.
Edge: Montreal

Challenge #6 - Reality TV
--The Expos tried an aggressive strategy by putting star pitcher Phillip Priddy on Dancing With the Stars.  But despite the best efforts of his partner, the saucy Russian Karina Smirnoff, he was a leadfoot on the floor, and was eliminated in week two of the competition.  Judge Bruno Tonioli commented that Priddy "looked like a hippo trying to make love to a salamander in knee high boots!"  Although no one was quite able to make sense of that comment, the intention was clear.  As for the Brewers, their duo of Apollo Gibson and Yoo-Nah Wan used their bilingual and cultural abilities to make it to the top three in the Amazing Race before they were finally beat out by a feuding young couple and a pair of oil rig workers.
Edge: Milwaukee

Challenge# 7 - MLB 2K11 Playoff
--The Expos clearly were the favorites heading into this competition, as nearly their entire roster plays video games in the clubhouse while eating fried chicken.  Most of them aren't of drinking age yet though, so Hawaiian Punch was served instead of beer.  The Brewers, while old and lacking good video game hand eye coordination, did have the bonus of Eric Grybowski and his World of Warcraft account, which was levelled up by thirteen paid Chinese men.  In a surprise, the Asian underground connections of Grybowski and the Brewers managed to beat the young turks of the Expos in the 7th game of the video game World Series, bringing ultimate glory to the Brewers.  For their services, the Chinese computer slaves were paid $15 each, a weeks wage for them if they were still living in the countryside.
Edge: Brewers

There you have it!  It was close, but in the end the Brewers came out on top in the 1st Annual MLB Blog Ultimate Test of Baseball Awesomeness!  Congrats to the Brewers, and better luck to the Expos next year!