The Milwaukee Brewers’ 57-season wait for a World Series title ended Wednesday with a victory over Tampa Bay to complete one of the most dominant postseason runs in MLB history.
When Trevor Megill hit a soft grounder on the final play of the game to advance to a 4-1 victory over the Rays in Game 5, the Brewers rushed up the dugout steps to the field at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The celebration has been more than half a century in the making.
“This is one of the greatest moments of my life,” Brewers shortstop Cooper Platt told Fox after the game. “Oh my God. This doesn’t even feel real. It’s so surreal.”
After moving from Seattle to Milwaukee in 1970 and playing for the first time as the Brewers, the team didn’t reach the World Series until 1982, losing in seven games. It then waited 44 years before returning to the Fall Classic.
For a team hungry for big moments, this year’s squad has delivered one after the other.
The Brewers’ 12-2 postseason record is one of the best since MLB’s postseason format expanded to include wild-card teams in 1995. The Brewers’ .857 winning percentage is only lower than the winning percentages of the 1999 New York Yankees and 2005 Chicago White Sox, both of which posted 11-1 records en route to their respective championships.
“I don’t even have words to say,” star pitcher Jacob Misiorovsky told Fox after the Game 5 win, in which he threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings in the crucial game.
Milwaukee is Major League Baseball’s smallest market. Its payroll ranks only 19th among 30 teams. In 12 playoff games, the team trailed nine times. But the Brewers found success in a variety of ways, winning seven of those games. Milwaukee hit seven homers in a sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, but hit just one homer in a 3-0 series lead at Tampa Bay. In the fifth, Milwaukee scored a run on two singles, a sacrifice fly and a double.
It wasn’t until the bottom of the ninth that Tampa Bay got on the board when Chandler Simpson’s two-out double to Liam Hicks cut the deficit to 4-1. Reliever reliever Aaron Ashby waited to relieve Megill in case he got into more trouble, but a soft grounder ended the game.
Catcher William Contreras hit four runs and hit .381 during the World Series, earning MVP honors.
“I have nothing to say,” Contreras said through an interpreter.
It’s no fluke that a scrappy team gets hot at the right time. The Milwaukee Bucks entered the All-Star Game in July with the second-best record in baseball and ultimately won an MLB-high 103 games, a franchise record. After defeating San Diego in the divisional round, they swept two-time defending champion Los Angeles in the National League Championship Series. Even though the Dodgers had more than double the Brewers’ payroll, Milwaukee scored 10 more runs in the sweep, securing a World Series berth against Tampa Bay.
The Rays are somewhat of a mirror image of Milwaukee, another team with little money looking to turn its regular-season success — the Rays won the most games in the American League — into its first World Series victory.
“Best feeling ever,” Brewers captain Christian Yelich said on the broadcast.
After winning the first two games of the World Series by one run, including a comeback from a 4-0 first-inning deficit in Game 2, Milwaukee won Game 3 10-1 on a run sparked by Christian Yelich’s stolen base in the fifth inning. When Yelich was challenged at second base, Milwaukee scored eight runs with two outs to put the game away without a home run.
Milwaukee’s championship run was only possible thanks to a multi-generational core of solid players. The 34-year-old Yelich and 33-year-old reliever Brandon Woodruff (whose Game 3 save was his first appearance since July 4 due to injury) are the only remaining players from the 2018 Brewers roster, one win away from that season’s World Series.
In the divisional round against San Diego, 20-year-old outfielder Jackson Chourio hit a two-run homer in the first game of the postseason to save the Milwaukee Bucks. Jolio then hit a single to win the next game.
On the mound, Milwaukee starts with Misiorovski, a 24-year-old who has been at breakneck speed, making just five starts as a rookie in 2025 before making the All-Star Game. In 2026, Misiorovsky led a pitching staff that again posted the second-lowest regular-season ERA in MLB. When he left the game, the bullpen’s arms took over as dirty and hard as Misiorovsky’s arms.
“It’s unbelievable,” Megill, who was on the mound in the final, said after the win. “Ten-year-old me would have been very proud.”
All pieces have served a purpose throughout the season. After the regular season ended, the Milwaukee Bucks were alone at the top of the standings.
When the postseason ended a month later, the Brewers were on top again. Their long wait for a championship was over.