Milwaukee won Game 5 on Oct. 28 to take the World Series 4-1 and end a 44-year wait. William Contreras was named MVP. The parade is Friday.
The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions for the first time. They beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 on Wednesday night, Oct. 28, at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., and won the series four games to one, according to the Associated Press.
How Game 5 went
Right-hander Jacob Misiorowski threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings and gave up two hits before leaving with a right calf cramp, the AP reports. Rookie Cooper Pratt had two hits and two RBIs, and catcher William Contreras added an RBI double in the sixth. Closer Trevor Megill pitched the last two innings and got Richie Palacios to ground out to end it.
Tampa Bay scored its only run in the ninth on a double by Chandler Simpson. By then thousands of Brewers fans who had traveled to Florida had taken over the seats behind Milwaukee's dugout. Owner Mark Attanasio told them from the postgame stage, "Milwaukee has waited 44 years, and Milwaukee, you have your world championship."
The numbers behind the title
Milwaukee led the majors with 103 wins in the regular season and went 11-2 in the postseason, including a sweep of the Dodgers in the NLCS, per the AP. Contreras was named World Series MVP after batting .381, and ESPN notes he won 10 of 13 challenges in the first Series to use the automated ball-strike system.
Pratt, 22, set a Series rookie record with six straight hits. Jackson Chourio set a five-game Series record with 11 hits. Manager Pat Murphy, 67, who survived a heart attack in 2020, guided a franchise that began as the Seattle Pilots in 1969. Its only other trip to the Series ended in a Game 7 loss in 1982.
The Rays fell to 0-3 in World Series appearances, the AP says.
What happens next
The Brewers say their championship parade is Friday, Oct. 30, starting at 10 a.m. at N. 4th St. and Wisconsin Ave. in Milwaukee, followed by a rally.
The celebration may be the last baseball for a while. The AP reports owners are pushing for a salary cap, and a management lockout is likely to start Dec. 2, which could threaten the 2027 season.
Our take
This is a title for the small-market argument, and it lands at an awkward moment. The AP notes this was the first Series since 1991 between two teams in the bottom half of payrolls, with the Brewers 19th and the Rays 25th. Owners say teams like these cannot compete regularly. Milwaukee just did, and the players' side has an easy example to point to in the cap fight. Whether that changes anything before Dec. 2 is an open question.
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Picture credit: Photo: Sewageboy (CC BY-SA 4.0), cropped
