Brewers Sweep the Champs, Head to First World Series Since 1982
· MuddySouth Music
Forty-four years is a long time to wait on anything. Ask anybody who has waited on a mill to reopen, a road to get paved, or a check that was "in the mail." Thursday night in Los Angeles, the Milwaukee Brewers finally quit waiting. They beat the Dodgers 6-4 in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, finished off a four-game sweep, and punched their ticket to the World Series for the first time since 1982, according to the Associated Press.
Down four, and nobody quit
The Brewers fell behind 4-0 early, on the road, against the two-time defending champs. Then they went to work: two runs in the fourth, two more in the fifth, and a go-ahead solo home run from Garrett Mitchell in the sixth. NBC Sports clocked that shot at 409 feet off Dodgers lefty Tanner Scott. David Hamilton added an insurance homer in the ninth. Per MLB.com, that four-run comeback tied the largest ever in a game that clinched a league championship series, and Milwaukee became only the fifth team to sweep the reigning World Series champion in a best-of-seven postseason series.
A grinder's ballclub
Here is the part working folks will appreciate. These Brewers play in baseball's smallest media market. MLB.com reports they tied for second-to-last in home runs this season and still scored the second-most runs by grinding out at-bats. They won a franchise-record 103 regular-season games. The Dodgers swept them out of last year's NLCS, and this year they came right back and returned the favor. Christian Yelich, the team's longest-tenured hitter, put it plain: "You have to have that faith." Game 1 is next Friday night at American Family Field in Milwaukee, against either Cleveland or Tampa Bay.
Between takes at the studio
The day I asked one of our MuddySouth Music producers about the Brewers, the studio was running wide open, and we had already covered everything from taxes to turbo before baseball came up. He leaned back from the board and asked me one first: "Is Heaven cold if Hell is hot?" He said he does not have the answer to every question, and he is not going to pretend he does. What he does know is that good people have spent their lives, and some have given them, to keep this country moving, free, and under God. Pennant or no pennant, good headlines or bad, he said, that is how it is going to stay. Then he went back to work, which felt about right for a story like this one.
A word from your writer
The Brewers proved the folks who stick around for the lean years get the best seats when it finally pays off. Same goes here. MuddySouth Music has a big year of outreach and fan get-togethers on the way, and the people on our contact list hear about every bit of it before anybody else does. No waiting 44 years, either. It is free and takes about a minute. Get on the list today, then go find a ballgame to holler at.