The Brewers face the Pirates and the Badgers start their season. But this weekend also marks the start of play in Italy's Serie A soccer league.

So, as Torino faces Lecce -- I know, hardly one of the more glamorous matches -- my son and I will don our granata Toro jerseys and hope for an auspicious start for our team with one of the most glorious histories in Italian soccer.

For a long time the internationally victorious national teams were basically the Toro team of that year. Sadly, the best of those teams died en masse when its plane, returning from a friendly in Portugal, crashed in 1949 and the most recent example of granata glory dates back to 1976.

The result is that Torino, long beloved by the city's working class, continues to exist in the shadow of "l'altra squadra" (the other team), Juvent*s (note: the policy at OnMilwaukee.com is to replace a vowel or two of any swear word that appears on the site).

L'altra squadra is sort of like baseball's Yankees. It has a ton of money -- having been the team of Turin's rich elite (including the Fiat empire and its ruling Agnelli family) for decades -- and can thusly buy the best players and rack up trophy after trophy.

And like most teams of its size and political influence, l'altra squadra can appear to be above the law. When it was central to a soccer scandal recently, much of the team's punishment was let to slide (in part, many believe, thanks to the Italian World Cup victory that year) and after one season beating the beejesus out of everyone in Serie B it was back in Serie A as if nothing had ever happened.

Anyway, my point is that whether or not you support the richest team (testify Brewers fans, testify), you support your team through thick and thin. Last year, Toro was king of the draw, notching only eight wins but tying seven times at home and seven times away. Those points were enough to prevent relegation.

If Torino -- which has flip-flopped over the past 30 years between Serie A and Serie B -- tanks and gets demoted, my son and I will still wear our granata jerseys on the last Sunday of August 2009, too. We'll cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Because, as the 1982 and 2008 Brewers seasons can attest, even during the darkest seasons there is a tinder of hope that can ignite an explosion of excitement. This year, that glimmer takes place at Turin's Stadio Comunale on Sunday, Aug. 31 when Lecce comes to town.

Ale ale!