Believe it, Milwaukee! Brewers are World Series champs for 1st time
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ST. PETERSBURG – In their 57th year in Milwaukee, the Brewers won the city’s first World Series title since 1957 Wednesday night. In the 44th year since they last appeared in a World Series, they won for Henry Aaron, whose No. 44 hangs, retired, atop American Family Field. And they didn’t just win the World Series, they took the Commissioner’s Trophy like they owned it, winning the 11 postseason games required while losing just twice along the way.
At long last, it’s no longer just about the 1957 Braves and 1982 Brewers. Jacob Misiorowski, Jackson Chourio, Christian Yelich, William Contreras, Cooper Pratt, Aaron Ashby and the rest of the 2026 Milwaukee Brewers will be just as beloved, forever.
At long last, after their 4-1 win over the Rays in Game 5, they are World Series champions.
“I can’t tell you how many people have told me, ‘I’ve waited my whole life for this,’” said the Captain, Yelich. “I think any time you win a World Series, it changes a place a little bit.”
It changed at 11:13 p.m. local time and 10:13 p.m. back in Milwaukee, where 31,000 fans filled the Brewers’ domed home to watch a game on the scoreboard that was played 1,200 miles away. Thousands more Milwaukee fans turned Tropicana Field into the Brewers’ home away from home all week, and watched live as the thing that they, their parents and their grandparents dreamed to see happen actually happened.
Before Wednesday night, five current franchises had never won the World Series: the Brewers, Mariners, Padres, Rays and Rockies. Now there are four.
Yelich, the 34-year-old who arrived in Milwaukee in 2018 and helped build the culture that has produced eight postseason berths in the past nine years – eight chances to catch fire at the right time and go all the way – did not take this responsibility lightly. This team took nothing lightly.
After winning a franchise-record and Major League-best 103 games in the regular season, they beat the Padres, baseball’s hottest second-half team, in the NLDS. Then they swept the Dodgers, who’d sent the Brewers home in the postseason three times in the previous eight years, in the NLCS. Then they drowned the Rays with suffocating pitching and relentless at-bats, brushing off a grueling, heartbreaking Game 4 loss when the Brewers were just three outs away from the promised land, to finish the job a day later.
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Misiorowski delivered his finest start of this postseason until calf cramping cut it short with two outs in the sixth. Pratt, the rookie shortstop, tied and broke a rookie record for the World Series with hits in his fifth and sixth consecutive plate appearances, then added a sacrifice fly in the sixth as the lead grew to 4-0 and the Rays dipped deeper into their bullpen. The Brewers’ bullpen, meanwhile, held firm.
Throughout Tropicana Field, fans wearing jerseys for Yelich, Chourio and Misiorowski remained standing. They could feel it. It was finally going to happen.