Milwaukee Brewers beat the Rays 4-1 to win their first World Series
Milwaukee won Game 5 4-1 at Tropicana Field to take the series 4-1. It is the first title in the franchise’s 57-year history and the city’s first since the 1957 Braves.
The Milwaukee Brewers are baseball champions for the first time. On Wednesday night they beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 of the World Series at Tropicana Field, closing out the series four games to one.
It has been a long wait. The franchise began in 1969 as the Seattle Pilots, moved to Milwaukee a year later and had reached exactly one World Series before this, losing it in 1982. The last time the city celebrated a baseball title was with the 1957 Braves, Hank Aaron’s team. The players dedicated this one to him.
A day late
Milwaukee were three outs from the trophy in Game 4. Tampa Bay tied it, dragged it to the 12th and walked it off 4-3 with a two-run inning. No team has ever lost a World Series from 3-0 up, and the Brewers were not about to be the first.
In the clincher, Jacob Misiorowski pitched his best start of the postseason until calf cramps forced him out with two away in the sixth. The bullpen did the rest. At the plate, rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt set a World Series rookie record with hits in six straight plate appearances, then added the sacrifice fly that made it 4-0.
Best team in baseball
This was no fluke. The Brewers won 103 regular-season games, a club record and the best mark in the majors. In October they got past the San Diego Padres, swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS and lost only twice in 11 postseason games.
Captain Christian Yelich, in his eighth season with the club, said people kept telling him they had waited their whole lives for this. Back home, around 31,000 fans watched on the screens at American Family Field.
That leaves four franchises still waiting for a first World Series: the Mariners, Padres, Rays and Rockies. It has been quite a week for firsts, with Fleetwood knocking Arsenal out to reach a first-ever League Cup quarter-final.
By Vasco Almada
Image: Sewageboy / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)