Let the beer flow in Milwaukee. The city finally has a World Series champion, and the Brewers made it official with a 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 5 at Tropicana Field.
Trevor Megill finished the job in the ninth and beyond, working the final two innings before retiring Richie Palacios to lock down the title.
It was the end of a 57-year championship drought for the Brewers, a stretch that had been the third-longest active run without a title in baseball and the fifth-longest in MLB history. That long wait stretches all the way back to the franchise’s beginning in 1969 as the Seattle Pilots.
For Milwaukee, it also marked the city’s first World Series celebration since the Henry Aaron-led Milwaukee Braves won it all in 1957.
Pat Murphy’s team rolled through a season that never really let up. The Brewers won a franchise-record 103 games in the regular season, then kept pouring it on in October.
They went 11-2 in the playoffs, matching the 2022 Astros and 1998 Yankees for the third-best postseason record in the wild card era. Their only two losses came in Game 3 of the NLDS at San Diego and Tuesday’s 12-inning classic against the Rays.
This championship also serves as the capstone to the best stretch in Brewers history. In their first 48 seasons, they reached the postseason only four times and made just one World Series trip, the seven-game loss to the St.
Louis Cardinals in 1982. Since 2018, they’ve been in October eight times, but until now they had never gotten past the NLCS.
For Tampa Bay, the loss closes a season that had already carried plenty of weight. The Rays climbed back to the top of the AL just one year after being forced out of their home ballpark because of damage from Hurricane Milton. Instead of a celebration, they’re left with a third straight World Series defeat in franchise history.
In Other News...
Rays Kept Their Season Alive But Game 5 Just Got Tougher
The Rays kept their season alive with a 12-inning win in Game 4, trimming Milwaukees series lead to 3-1 and buying themselves at least one more chance to keep this thing going. Nick Martinez was a big part of the rescue effort, giving Tampa Bay two scoreless innings on the kind of short turnaround teams usually try to avoid, while the bullpen handled the rest of the heavy lifting in a game that demanded just about every available arm.
Kevin Cash made it clear afterward that the victory came with a price, because getting through an extra-inning playoff game meant leaning hard on pitchers the club may need again immediately. Game 5 now shifts from a simple elimination test to a planning exercise for Tampa Bay, with the staff having to sort through who can still answer the call and how far the Rays can push the group that just helped them survive. [Read more 🡒]
Rays World Series Pregame Took A Weird Turn Before Game 4
The pregame stage for Game 4 of the World Series took an odd detour before the first pitch, when FOX Sports analyst David Ortiz told the broadcast crew he had been stuck in an elevator. Kevin Burkhardt, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter all wound up talking through the hiccup on air, turning a routine lead-in into a surprisingly memorable aside before the biggest game of the season.
Ortiz said he was not claustrophobic, but the situation still rattled him enough to become a topic on the set. For a national broadcast built around the matchup on the field, the unexpected delay gave the production a little extra drama of its own and added one more strange note to a night already carrying World Series pressure. [Read more 🡒]
Rays Keep World Series Hopes Alive After Wild Extra-Inning Escape
The Rays were staring at the end of their season in Game 4 against the Brewers, and instead got the kind of chaotic night that can swing an entire World Series. With multiple lead changes and big relief innings from Nick Martinez and Bryan Baker, Tampa Bay kept itself close long enough for the game to spill into extra innings, where every pitch felt season-defining.
Ben Williamson eventually supplied the finish, lining the walk-off hit that sent the Rays home with a win and pushed the series to a Game 5. For a club that needed every out just to survive, the victory was equal parts bullpen grit and late-game nerve, the kind of escape that can change the mood of a series in a hurry. [Read more 🡒]