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WS: At long last, Bushville wins again

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Milwaukee Brewers

Series MVP William Contreras (with mask), Les Mis, and the Brewers give Milwaukee its first World Series title since Sputnik I. (Fox Sports capture.)

Long enough ago, in a world far enough away, Milwaukee hosted its first World Series champion. It happened in the same month as Sputnik I greeted the world and Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The city the Yankees dismissed as Bushville embraced the insult as a badge of glory.

Those Braves turned the Yankees aside in seven games, led by a Yankee discard named Lew Burdette, who went forth to make the world’s worst country music record until the advent of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. And, by three Hall of Famers (Henry Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn) equal to those Yankees’s three. (Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle.)

Bushville won. It only took another 69 years for the city putting on the Schlitz to host another World Series champion. The Brewers of Bushville kept the Rays of Tampa at bay yet again Wednesday night. Their 4-1 Game Five triumph had everything except the kitchen sink thrown into it.

The Series in which only four balls were hit over fences didn’t need the long ball for both sides to engage, electrify, and entertain. Until the Rays plain ran out of petrol after their Game Four semi-surprise win, both teams had enough small, medium, and rub-a-dub-dub mojo working to leave fans wanting as much more as they could offer.

This wasn’t just a World Series conquest.

The Brewers swept their nemeses from L.A. out of this year’s National League Championship Series. The same Damndodgers who dispatched them from three of their seven previous postseasons. The Brewers also became only the fifth team to win 100+ regular season games and get rid of the previous season’s World Series winners.

They won eight straight postseason games from the final game of their division series win to Game Three Tuesday night. Tying the postseason streak records of the 2019 Nationals, the 2014 Royals, the 2005 White Sox, and the 2004 Red Sox. It might have been nine straight for these Brewers if only manager Pat Murphy removed his caution vest for the bottom of the Game Four twelfth.

After his sharp rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt hit the tiebreaking home run in the top of the Game Four twelfth, Murphy could and arguably should have sent his scheduled Game Five starter Jacob Misiorowski out for the bottom of the Game Four twelfth. The World Series is three outs from being in your vault, Skip!

To everyone snarking that Misiorowski’s Game Five triumph proved Murphy right in holding him back—and sending unknown soldier Shane Drohan out to surrender the tying and losing runs on four straight singles—consider that it also proved Les Mis might well have nailed the Series-winning outs without anything interrupting him.

Inexperience! some might have snarked at suggesting Misiorowski should have been saved. Aside from him already having established himself in this postseason, starting pitchers have been sent out for attempted shutdown relief with past World Series wins on the line or close enough to it. At all levels of experience.

And, rookies or sophomores haven’t been unheard of pitching in Series games where survival is on the menu or winning is just within reach. Come to think of it, another Brewers rook, Robert Gasser, got lost in the aftermath after that unprecedented two-out, eight-hit, eight-run Game Three fifth memory-lapsed his magnificent starting six shutout innings.

So it was Drohan, after Rays third baseman Joey Ortiz’s very unfortunate throwing error allowed Junior Caminero aboard (though he’d come out for a runner after dinging his leg) prodded Murphy to life Antonio Senzatela. Drohan, a rookie. Inexperience!

You are ok with sending a rookie out who’d shown up once, in the NLCS, where he  surrendered an earned run, two walks, and a hit in one inning’s work, to nail down a World Series sweep? But you’re not ok with sending out a sophomore who’s the likely National League Cy Young Award winner and gave you a 1.86 fielding-independent pitching rate in the first two postseason rounds?

That scratching sound you heard was Casey Stengel on his head from the Elysian Fields, trying to remind you of his law: If you have an opening, shove with your shoulder.

Then it was single, RBI single, single, and Ben Williamson becoming a Tampa Bay hero singling the game winner home Tuesday night. For the first time since the Series moved to Tampa in the first place, the racket inside the Trop belonged to the Rays fans who made up about half the audience.

Their joy lasted long enough for Misiorowski to take the Game Five ball, pitch five and two-thirds shutout innings, and get about ten times as many ground and (especially) fly outs as he got strikeouts (two). Now the racket belonged to the traveling Brewers faithful.

Now, it was stout Rays starting pitcher Drew Rasmussen going gamely forth on short rest and working four one-run, four-punchout innings, before yielding to a Rays bullpen whose needle was just about pointing to E.

Now, it was Series MVP Willson Contreras doing his usual steering of the ship from behind the plate, deploying the ABS system almost as though it had his name on it, and pitching in at the plate by thanking Christian Yelich for taking one on the leg for the team opening the top of the sixth with an RBI double right away.

Now, it was three more Brewers runs to come through that pen, from an RBI single in the fifth to the aforesaid Contreras double plus a long foul sacrifice fly in the sixth.

When Chandler Simpson, the Rays left fielder who turns basepaths and outfield routes into track meets, singled catcher Liam Hicks home in the bottom of the ninth, it seemed almost like the Rays were tempted to say excuse us before expiring.

They don’t need excuses. Both sides made a few mistakes along the way. Both sides took the other’s measure and found nothing wanting. Two teams who looked like an even match in abilities and approaches entered this World Series. The Brewers found ways to resemble the Third Army without a crowd big tanks or incendiary devices.

Even their fans found ways to persevere, especially when World Series ticket prices for the Milwaukee leg of the Series compared proportionally to the ancient, discredited $200 hammer. Brewers fans traveled to Tampa in such force that Tropicana Field could have been mistaken for the Brewers’s alternate or spring training digs. And American Family Field packed full regardless for showing Games Three through Five on the LEDs.

Nothing remained but for baseball itself to get the message that its government’s narrative about the Davids helpless against the Goliaths has always been a lie. The Brewers, no Goliaths they, have won five of the past six National League Central titles and six of the past nine. The Rays, except for shaky 2024 and 2025, have three American League East titles and a second place finish in the past seven years.

But The Narrative would have you think the Damndodgers coming thatclose to losing last year’s World Series before getting swept out of this year’s NL pennant was an aberration. It would have you think the Rays knocking the Empire Emeritus out this year in a division series sweep was a hiccup.

It would have you think anything except that the whining from Commissioner Pepperwinkle and his will-nots (remember: this isn’t haves versus have-nots, this is wills versus will-nots, and the wills aren’t limited to kabillionaires on the coasts) is a sales pitch for Uncle Rob’s Happy Henbane.

It would have you think that nothing means anything except the big player salaries that must be capped. It would have you think that there’s nothing wrong with under-investing in the kind of managing, coaching, training and medicine, scouting and player development, analytical minds and attitudinal minds.

The kind that enable a Pat Murphy to dismiss the Damndodgers as a lot of Hall of Famers who proved lesser than a lot of gamers. (The Damndodgers sure didn’t help their own cause by letting Shohei Ohtani play while still hurting, did they?)

Murphy knows better than that. He knows bloody well that it isn’t just dollars or Cooperstown candidates that make them the Damndodgers. He wouldn’t have hoisted the World Series trophy or sent his game sweatshirt to an eager Hall of Fame if he didn’t. But he’s entitled to be a smartass for a little while.

A will won the World Series. A will lost it after beating another will for a pennant. With Commissioner Pepperwinkle’s only-too-eager help, the will-nots will continue flogging the wrong horse. They’ll never get that this postseason and this World Series knocked Uncle Rob’s Happy Henbane harrumph into a cocked blue and gold hat.

WS Game Two: The Brewers—“They had us right where we wanted them”

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Sal Frelick

Sal Frelick hitting the first Brewers World Series home run since Ben Oglivie 16,075 days previous . . . (Fox Sports capture.)

Not even the mild controversy of Game Two’s final strike could erase what’s becoming a theme for these postseason Brewers. They won’t let any deficit keep them from the steady but certain completion of their self-appointed rounds.

Jump them with a little help from one of their own mistakes for four runs in the first, the way the Rays did Saturday night? The Brewers just look, listen, and think, They have us right where we want them.

Pry two right back out of the Rays’s ace Drew Rasmussen in the bottom of the inning, but leave first and third and let Rasmussen settle in for one of his usual outings? They have us right where we want them.

Sneak a third run in the fourth on a ball sneaking through Rays first baseman Jonathan Aranda’s legs with first and third and one out? They have us right where we want them.

Stay a run behind opening the bottom of the sixth, watch right fielder Sal Frelick wring his way to a full-count ninth pitch off Rays reliever Ian Seymour? They have us right where we want them. Watch Frelick homer on that pitch? They had us right where we wanted them.

Because that’s just the Brewers, too.

And that was about a week after they fell behind 4-0 to the Damndodgers in National League Championship Series Game Four. A deficit that included a still-ailing Shohei Ohtani finding enough of a power reserve to hit a three-run homer measured not in distance but on the Richter scale.

They had us right where we wanted them, too. And—a two-run single in the fourth, an RBI single and a bases-loaded game-tying walk in the fifth, a leadoff homer in the sixth, and a two-out homer in the ninth later, the Brewers finished the pennant sweep they started.

Now, with a 5-4 Game Two win in the World Series, the Brewers look unsinkable and the Rays look half sunk. Beware how deceptive looks can be. Remind yourself there’s still time for the Rays to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, say to themselves, They have us right where we want them, too.

They can make the Brewers suffer in the Trop, a pressure cooker of a dome equal to American Family Field’s roof closure for a racket down from the stands. They can force the Series back to Milwaukee with those comeback kids needing yet another comeback. Or two.

Can’t they?

Who knows? It’s not looking great for the Rays after Rasmussen—who hadn’t allowed three or more runs in his previous thirty-six innings of work—got pried for three runs in three and two-thirds innings Saturday night.

It’s not looking great for the Rays after their bullpen, the fifth-best in the American League on the regular season, couldn’t even think about getting Games One and Two to their lights-out ninth-inning man Bryan Baker.

It’s not looking great for the Rays after Frelick fought Seymour through eight pitches most of which Frelick admitted later enabled less-than-comfortable swings, then got what he wanted on the ninth pitch, a sinker right down Main Street—and hit it on a high line over the center field fence. For the first World Series home run any Brewer has hit in 16,075 days. (The last: Ben Oglivie, fifth inning, 1982 Game Seven, off the Cardinals’s Joaquín Andújar.)

It’s not looking great for the Rays after rookie Brewers shortstop Cooper Pratt—who enabled their early lead in the first place by throwing Yandy Díaz’s game-opening grounder away—atoned for that with second baseman Brice Turang on third (leadoff double; advance on a fly out) when he lined a single into shallow right field, letting Turang score the fifth Brewers run without a sweat.

It’s not looking good for the Rays when they’re up against a Brewers bullpen that has a 1.24 ERA this entire postseason while their own pen minus Baker has a 4.20.

And, when they’re up against an Aaron Ashby who isn’t the Brewers’s designated closer but has a zero ERA and a 1.24 fielding-independent pitching rate over three and a third Series innings so far. Not to mention 15.2 scoreless innings to start his entire postseason, a third of an inning shy of the record sixteen Cleveland’s Andrew Miller set in 2016. Over that 15.2? Five hits, three walks, seventeen punchouts.

There was Ashby on the mound with Díaz at the plate and the Rays down to their final out Saturday night. There was Ashby in the hold 3-1 to the dangerous enough Díaz. There was Brewers catcher William Contreras calling for and getting a curve ball that froze Díaz like a turkey awaiting its Thanksgiving dinner thaw. There was Contreras calling for a second straight curve, Ashby throwing it down and in, Díaz unable to keep from swinging.

The Rays’s designated hitter tried to check the swing. An appeal to first base rung him up with the game-ending out. The swing looked so bloody close on replays—the general rule is that if the bat head passes the front of the plate, it’s a swing and a strike, though Díaz’s bat head was so close the call could have gone either way.

If it had been ruled check swing, ball four, it would have meant Aranda batting with first and third and two out. Aranda had one double that came to naught on the night, but he’d gone 3-for-3 with a run scored in Game One. He wouldn’t exactly have been easy meat, even for Ashby.

But rest assured. If it did happen that way, Ashby and the Brewers would have given themselves a quick review, looked at Aranda checking in, and thought to themselves, yet again: They have us right where we want them.

Beware. The Rays had 98 comeback wins on the regular season to the Brewers having a mere 34. But the Brewers have done it seven times this postseason—including four straight to the Damndodgers—to the Rays doing it nada.

Other than the change of venue, and even with rejuvenated Freddy Peralta scheduled to start Game Three, the Rays can’t yet look at the Brewers and think, They have us right where we want them.