Brewers end Dodgers' three-peat bid with an NLCS sweep of their own

LOS ANGELES -- For 363 days, the Brewers dreamed of a different ending. On Thursday night, they wrote it.

The script? Familiar enough. A National League Championship Series sweep culminating at Dodger Stadium. Only this time, it was the Brewers who poured from the first-base dugout, celebrating an NL pennant decades in the making -- and celebrating in the very ballpark where their previous season had come to such an unceremonious end.

The two-time defending champion Dodgers have been dethroned. For the first time in 44 years, the Brewers are heading to the World Series. They beat Los Angeles, 6-4, in Game 4 on Thursday night. Next week, Milwaukee will host the Fall Classic for the first time since 1982.

And could this ending have been any more fitting?

Three times in the last decade, the Brewers had been expelled from the postseason by Los Angeles. A year ago, they were swept away with relative ease, as the Dodgers set a course for their second consecutive World Series title. It went unspoken, but all summer, the Brewers seemed to know: If they were going to get where they wanted to go, this was the team they needed to beat.

Thursday’s clincher did not come easy. Why should it? These Brewers don’t do easy. They fell behind 4-0 in the second inning. Dodger Stadium shook when Shohei Ohtani’s titanic three-run blast landed deep in the right-field pavilion.

But the Brewers did what these Brewers do. They answered. Two runs in the fourth. Two more in the fifth. Garrett Mitchell’s go-ahead home run in the sixth, and David Hamilton’s insurance blast in the ninth. Shortly thereafter, the Brewers were celebrating a first in MLB history: They became the first team to sweep the very same team that had eliminated them via sweep in the previous postseason.

Across four games, every punch the Dodgers threw was returned with a Milwaukee counterpunch. Facing elimination on Thursday, Los Angeles moved Ohtani back into the leadoff spot. He’s the best player on the planet, when healthy, and if the Dodgers were going to go down … why go down with anyone else at the top of their lineup?

That meant it was Ohtani who strode to the plate against Brewers right-handed reliever Dustin May with two on and two out in the second. May threw a 1-1 cutter. It hung. Ohtani unleashed that ferocious left-handed swing with a bit of an uppercut. (You know the one, even if it had been a while since you last saw it.) The ball carried to the very back of the right-field pavilion, Ohtani’s first home run since Aug. 18.

Dodger Stadium erupted. The two-time defending champs had life. They led 4-0 in the second inning. They had Tarik Skubal lined up for Game 5. And Yoshinobu Yamamoto for Game 6. And Blake Snell for Game 7. Maybe, just maybe …

The Brewers had other ideas. William Contreras and Jake Bauers hit back-to-back doubles in the fourth, cutting the Dodgers’ lead to 4-2. An inning later, Sal Frelick walked and stole a base, then scored on Hamilton’s RBI single. Tyler Glasnow’s night was done after 4 1/3 innings. A few batters later, Bauers plated the tying run with a bases-loaded walk.

Mitchell led off the sixth by pulverizing a Tanner Scott fastball, and the Brewers had the lead. They held onto it for dear life. Aaron Ashby stranded the tying run in scoring position in the seventh. Then again in the eighth.

He just kept going. Ashby got Kiké Hernández to line out to Jackson Chourio in left field to end it, and with that, the Brewers had their first National League pennant. (When they last reached the Fall Classic in 1982, they did so in the American League.) In the coming weeks, they’ll get a chance for another first: their first World Series title. Either the Rays or Guardians will stand in their way.

But first, a party 44 years in the making.