MILWAUKEE – The Brewers were this close to bringing the World Series to Milwaukee in Christian Yelich’s very first season here. When he homered off the Dodgers’ Walker Buehler in the first inning of Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS, the Brewers were eight innings away. Twenty-four measly outs. They never got even one of those outs before losing the lead. Then, Chris Taylor made the catch, Yasiel Puig hit the homer, and Milwaukee’s drought went on.
Now here they are, eight years and seven too-early postseason exits later, finally playing in the Fall Classic for the first time in 44 years, and taking Game 1 over the Rays, 3-2, on Friday night at American Family Field.
Who was more fitting than Yelich to drive in the first run?
“We don’t care who does it,” he said, “as long as somebody does.”
True. But his teammates felt like it was right.
“And hitting him in the three-hole, too?” Sal Frelick said. “The two guys in front of him like to get on base, so we were hoping he was in a situation like that early. I’m pumped.”
There were plenty of reasons to be pumped after Yelich’s RBI triple in the first inning popped out of the glove of Rays center fielder Jonny DeLuca in center field the way it didn’t for Taylor when he snared Yelich’s liner back in 2018. It gave the Brewers a lead they never surrendered en route to Milwaukee’s first World Series victory in 16,077 days.
A wild crowd of 43,250 was held in suspense all the way to the end, when the Brewers thought they had a game-ending play but didn’t, and closer Trevor Megill had to get one more out while smoke from the prematurely launched fireworks still hung in the air.
Megill got the out. The Brewers got the win.
Maybe this isn’t 2018 against the Dodgers. Or 2019 against the Nationals when Juan Soto’s base hit took a wrong turn. Or 2021 against the Braves when Freddie Freeman hit a left-on-left homer off Josh Hader. Or 2024 when Pete Alonso went deep to snatch a series victory from Devin Williams. Or all of the other heartbreaks along the way.
“It was like, all right, we’re off and running,” Yelich said. “We had a little bit of a layoff there and it was just nice to be back out on the field playing.”
They didn’t waste any time getting the crowd engaged. Jackson Chourio hit Rays starter Nick Martinez’s first pitch for a single and scored on the triple from Yelich, 34, who entered the night with the sixth-most career games among active players without playing in a World Series. Now, according to Elias, he’s the seventh player to hit a triple in his first World Series at-bat, the first since the Royals’ Lynn Jones did it as a pinch-hitter in Game 1 in 1985.
William Contreras kept it going for the Brewers with a scorching RBI single off the glove of shortstop Taylor Walls, and Chourio added to his October legend with a late insurance RBI that gave Jacob Misiorowski and relievers Abner Uribe, Aaron Ashby and Megill just enough to keep the Rays at bay.
The Brewers lead the World Series, 1-0. In series with the current 2-3-2 format, teams that have taken a 1-0 lead at home have gone on to win the series 70 of 104 times (67%), including the Brewers’ 2026 NLCS sweep over the Dodgers.
“This Series still has a long way to go,” Yelich said.
Of course it does. But Friday night was also an opportunity to reflect again on how far the Brewers have come.
That wasn’t lost on Brandon Woodruff, the only other Brewers player left from the time they got so close in 2018.
“We talked about it, seriously, me and ‘Yeli,’ for a little while,” Woodruff said. “All of the experiences we had over the last nine years, it’s laid the foundation for what it is today. You know what I mean? We could never get over the hump.
“If you look at Sal and Brice [Turang] and them, they don’t know what not playing playoff baseball is like. That’s all they’ve known. It’s pretty cool.”
Yelich knows differently. So do the fans who came to see him and the rest of the Brewers on Friday night, who famously threw a parade for a World Series losing team in 1982, and have celebrated that season ever since.
This season has given those folks hope for a real parade.
“People coming up to you saying they’ve waited their whole life for this, and for this Series and the team to be back at this point, it’s pretty cool,” Yelich said. “They’re a big impact on these games, how loud they’ve been. The atmosphere they’ve created, it’s definitely a difference-maker.”
It was not too long ago that Brewers manager Pat Murphy worried about those same fans making a difference in a very different way. When Murphy moved the designated hitter down to seventh in the order amid a long slump that had fans grumbling loudly enough for the manager to hear from his perch, he pleaded with them to remember the good old days.
“Remember who this guy was, you know what I mean?” Murphy said then. “If we’re going to thread the needle, we’re going to need Yelich.”
Now, they have him. After being named team captain during the final weekend of the regular season, Yelich is hitting .286 in the postseason and has driven in four runs in nine games. That’s four more runs than he drove in during a stretch of 19 postseason games between his home run in Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS against the Dodgers and his RBI single in Game 3 of this year’s NLDS against the Padres.
“There’s no question, Christian has taken that ‘C’ on his chest to another level,” Murphy said. “He prepares, he’s a leader, and it’s helped us a bunch.”
Woodruff knows that best. He remembers how much it hurt to come so close to the World Series in 2018, and how good it feels to be there in '26.
“It seems so long ago,” he said. “I’ve seen some videos from back then, and it’s more grainy than it is now. Now we’ve got drones that look like Star Wars out there. It’s crazy. My, how things have changed.”
Was it worth the wait?
“Shoot, are you kidding me?” Woodruff said. “They must have opened the gates a little early because the fans were piling in while we were taking BP, and they’re going nuts. It’s a good feeling.”
“It’s cool to be able to provide memories for people to be able to share with their kids, their grandparents or just friends who have been Brewers fans over the years, for decades,” Yelich said. “It’s been a really cool part of this run that we don’t take lightly.”