LOS ANGELES — There’s always been the misconception that it was the late, legendary Bob Uecker who uttered what were, before Thursday night, the six sweetest words ever said about the Milwaukee Brewers. But no. Uecker hustled down to the clubhouse amid the final innings of Game 5 of the 1982 American League Championship Series to host the pending celebration on radio. So when Rod Carew hit a bouncer to Robin Yount at shortstop, and Yount made a throw to Cecil Cooper that seemed like it hung in the air forever, and fans streamed onto the field at County Stadium with joy, it was Uecker’s broadcast partner, Dwayne Mosley, who said those six magic words.
“Milwaukee, you have a World Series!”
Over the next four decades, it sometimes seemed like those words might never be said again.
Then, it happened. The Brewers came from four runs down to beat the Dodgers in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, 6-4, and swept the series in four games.
Milwaukee – and Wisconsin – you have a World Series. This time, it was one of Uecker’s partners in the booth, Jeff Levering, who had the call when Jackson Chourio ran down the final out at the left field warning track.
“The Brewers win the pennant!” Levering said. “Oh my God, the Brewers win the pennant! The World Series will go through Wisconsin!”
The Captain
Christian Yelich stood at the very same locker in the corner of the cramped visitors’ clubhouse at Dodger Stadium almost precisely one year ago. The longest-tenured hitter on the team, whose arrival in 2018 coincided with the start of this latest golden era for the franchise, had just seen another chance slip away. The Brewers had been swept in the 2025 NLCS, the third time during Yelich’s tenure that mighty L.A. ended Milwaukee’s season in the playoffs. It started with Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS, when Dodgers left fielder Chris Taylor made the catch that earned him a nickname from Pat Murphy that can’t be said in polite company. Red Sox fans who watched the Yankees’ Bucky Dent hit that home run know the one.
Still, Yelich refused to give up the belief that the Brewers would make it to the World Series someday.
Now, a year later, after the Brewers surprised Yelich by naming him captain, they’ve done it. They’re no Harvey’s Wallbangers, as the '82 team was called while leading the Major Leagues in home runs. These Brewers tied for second to last in home runs but scored the second-most runs during the season by “dragging pitchers to hell,” as scrappy outfielder Sal Frelick liked to say.
Then, out of nowhere, they out-homered the Dodgers in the NLCS, 7-1, capped by Garrett Mitchell’s tiebreaking solo homer in the sixth inning of Game 4, and David Hamilton’s huge insurance shot in the ninth.
After falling to the Dodgers in the postseason in 2018, and 2020, and 2025, they beat L.A.
“You have to have that faith, and you have to have, like, the belief that you know this group can get it done,” Yelich said. “It's hard. But like I’ve said throughout this series, it's hard to draw comparisons from year to year. This team's different than last year's team.”
It’s different than any other team.
Thursday was the Brewers’ 170th meaningful game this season. They have won 110 of them. It started with a franchise record and MLB-leading 103 wins in the regular season, then three more in the NLDS against a Padres team that was baseball’s winningest club after the All-Star break, and four more in the NLCS against the defending two-time World Series champion Dodgers.
The Brewers need four more.
The Architects
Milwaukee’s baseball bosses were laughing the other day about the time a frustrated fan dropped off a cake with the receptionist at then-Miller Park. After making the playoffs in 2008 and playing to within two wins of the World Series in 2011, the franchise had fallen back into a funk by the middle of the decade, with a collapse in the second half of 2014 and a change at manager early in 2015. Eventually, there would also be turnover on the roster and in the GM suite.
After the Brewers won a couple of games in early May, the cake arrived. In blue frosting, surrounded by Brewers logos, it said, “Congratulations. You’re no longer the worst team in MLB.”
Club officials did not take it as a compliment. (Though several brave souls actually ate the cake.)
How far the franchise has come.
“It’s hard to even process it, to be honest with you,” said assistant GM Karl Mueller, who started with the Brewers in 2004 as one of a trio of young, smart, analytically minded aspiring baseball officials dubbed the “whiz kids” by then-manager Ned Yost. It was the early days of video scouting, and Mueller and his crew used VHS tapes.
The cake-maker was right. The Brewers were no longer the worst team in MLB. Once that mini-rebuild started bearing fruit, the Brewers started winning and haven’t stopped. Over the past 10 regular seasons, only the Dodgers, Astros and Yankees have higher winning percentages. Over the last three regular seasons since Murphy took over as manager, no team has a higher winning percentage.
And now the Brewers have begun to stack some success in the postseason. After being swept by the Dodgers in last year’s NLCS, the Brewers returned the favor. They are the first team to do that. Heck, they are the first team in 103 years to get swept by a team in the postseason and then rebound to beat that same team in the following postseason.
“You can feel it just sitting here. It’s real,” said president of baseball operations Matt Arnold. “Now we have to stay focused.”
The Owners
After the Brewers took Game 3 on Wednesday night, Brewers owner Mark Attanasio placed a call. It was 10:50 p.m. CT back in Milwaukee, but that didn’t matter. Bud Selig, the 92-year-old Brewers founder, picked up the phone.
Selig was too wired to sleep. He kept coming back to the same word when talking about this year’s Brewers, Attanasio said.
“Remarkable.”
And it really is. When Attanasio’s group bought the Brewers going into the 2005 season, the franchise was coming off its 12th consecutive losing season. When they finished .500 that first season, it felt like making the playoffs. When they won the NL Wild Card in 2008 to end a 26-year postseason drought, it felt like winning the World Series.
But now the Brewers actually have a chance to win the World Series.
“This morning when I was trying to deal with my anxiety,” Attanasio said, “I started thinking, ‘Gee, it’s been 44 years.’ Well, think about the number 44.”
It was Hank Aaron’s number throughout his Hall of Fame career, including his two seasons with the Brewers when he hit the last of his 755 home runs. That was 50 years ago. Later, Aaron and Uecker helped lobby Wisconsin legislators during the fight to build Miller Park to keep the Brewers rooted in baseball’s smallest media market.
Attanasio couldn’t help but think about those old friends when Ty France’s fly ball deflected off the roof and settled into Chourio’s glove in NLDS Game 1. Or when Mitchell caught the deep fly ball from a bubble-blowing Manny Machado in the clinching NLDS Game 4. Or how an emotionally spent Jake Bauers decided against retirement in 2024 when his wife got pregnant, only to enjoy an age-30 breakout this season and carry the Brewers with epic at-bat after epic at-bat in this NLCS. Or when the Brewers became the first team ever to come from behind to win six times in the first eight games of this postseason.
“I think there’s some divine intervention there,” Attanasio said.
But make no mistake: This team earned everything that comes next. The Fall Classic is coming back to Milwaukee.
“It’s a remarkable story,” Attanasio said, channeling Selig again. “It sounds better when he says it. He says it with import. It’s a remarkable story.”
The Fans
The fans are into this story, that’s for sure. Joe Stolarczyk watched Game 3 at his favorite Central Wisconsin watering hole – tip of the cap to Hog Creek Bar & Grill in Mosinee – before inspiration struck at 1 a.m. He reached out to some buddies to inquire if anyone wanted to take an impromptu trip to Los Angeles. Since it was the wee hours of a Thursday morning, no one responded.
“So I called my brother and sister and said, ‘Let’s go!’” Stolarczyk said.
They went. David Stolarczyk and their sister, Mary Pilz, bought tickets to Game 4 while they were on the road from Mosinee to Minneapolis to catch a flight, and they were in their seats behind home plate by the time the Brewers finished batting practice. Joe was living in Alaska the last time the Brewers won a trip to the World Series, and he wasn’t going to miss it again.
Neither were Dave Wuest or Murray Williams. They’ve been friends since kindergarten, decades before Wuest settled in Atlanta and Williams in Orange County. They’re the sort of fans who listened to Uecker call every game on the radio in 1982 and can still recite that Brewers lineup from top to bottom. It was “crushing,” Wuest said, when they lost Game 7 against the Cardinals.
“We’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting to get back,” Wuest said.
As fans filled Dodger Stadium on Thursday afternoon, the air was thick with the real possibility they would witness it happen. This was the day. Thousands stayed after the final out to see the Brewers presented with the Warren C. Giles Trophy, given annually to the NL champions. Yelich never expected so many fans to make the trip to Los Angeles, given how many bad days the Brewers had endured here before.
“It’s been electric,” Yelich said. “And we’re going to need them for the World Series."
They seem ready.
“It would mean everything,” Joe Stolarczyk said.
“They’re a different animal this year,” said his brother David.
“They just find a way,” Wuest said.