Major League Baseball’s smallest market owns its biggest prize. Milwaukee won Wednesday’s fifth game at Tampa Bay 4-1, wrapping up the series 4-1 and claim the first championship in franchise history, ending a 57-year wait in their first trip to the Fall Classic since 1982.
Less than a day earlier, the celebration had been snatched away when Tampa Bay won Game 4 with a walk-off in the 12th inning. Milwaukee shrugged it off. Jacob Misiorowski, the hardest-throwing starter in the sport and the favourite for the National League Cy Young Award, gave up only two hits over five and two-thirds scoreless innings. His fastball still averaged above 101 mph, even on a night he struck out just two. A cramp in his right calf forced him off in the sixth, and Brewers fans in the visiting section rose to applaud him.
At the plate, rookie Cooper Pratt again stole the show. His single in the second put Milwaukee ahead, and another in the fifth gave him hits in six consecutive plate appearances, a World Series record for a first-year player and the longest such run by anyone since David Ortiz in 2013. A sacrifice fly in the sixth added a fourth run. Catcher William Contreras, who doubled in a run that inning, was named Series MVP.
Thousands of travelling fans had turned Tropicana Field into a home game for the visitors. Captain Christian Yelich called it “the best feeling ever” and dedicated the title to a city that had been patient for generations. Milwaukee now has a parade to plan.
