I don’t think I ever wrote down or said out loud my inkling that this year’s Milwaukee Brewers will win the World Series. The feeling started early this summer, but not until they came back to face the Los Angeles Dodgers in the post-season and keep winning did I start to fully believe.
Thursday night the Brewers became the first team in history that was swept in a championship series to come back the following year and complete a sweep against the same opponent.
This is my New York Mets in 1969 and my 1996 Green Bay Packers all over again, but the Mets only had to wait seven years to win a title (an eternity for a 16-year-old), the Packers waited 29 years (an eternity for a 43-year-old), and now the Brewers are in this place for the first time in 44 years (an eternity even for a 73-year-old).
This is an entertaining team that has renewed my interest in baseball. It’s not even the game it was in 1982, with its pitch count and pitch clock, the National League designated hitter, the 10th-inning ghost runners, the instant replay challenges, and the disappearance of the complete-game pitcher, but the thrill of the line drive, the successful bunt, the cat-and-mouse game within the game between the pitcher and batter, and of course the ball sailing over the fence — those are all still there.
The Brewers cannot compete with the Dodgers’ deep wallet, so they invested in developing young players who might someday play for the big-team bucks but who are hungry today — kids with scary-good talent who play as a team, and what a team the Milwaukee organization has assembled.
It was sweet karma, after the heartbreaking sweep of the NLCS in 2025, for the Brewers to sweep the Dodgers, and it will be amazing to see them win the World Series with the ghosts of Bob Uecker and 1982 looking on with big smiles. Got on, get up, get outta here.
