LOS ANGELES -- Just when Dodger Stadium started to believe again. Just when Will Smith’s two-run double had gotten Los Angeles off the mat. Just when the two-time defending champions were starting to look the part.
There was Jake Bauers at the plate again, fouling off one pitch after another, refusing to die.
If the Brewers are really going to do this -- and, after beating the Dodgers, 6-2, in Game 3 on Wednesday night, they’re now one win from reaching their first World Series in 44 years -- those images of Bauers will surely come to define this 2026 National League Championship Series.
It was Bauers who turned in an epic 12-pitch battle with Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2 on Monday in Milwaukee. Two days later, he was at it again. Bauers saw 11 pitches from Blake Snell in the top of the seventh inning. He fouled off the eighth, ninth and 10th of them. The 11th was a fastball that caught too much plate. Bauers turned on it and sent it to the right-field pavilion at Dodger Stadium for a two-run homer. His dugout erupted -- just about the only noise in an utterly stunned ballpark.
“Super sick,” was the way Brewers center fielder Garrett Mitchell described the moment he’d just witnessed from the on-deck circle. “What more can you say?”
The Brewers had turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead. One batter later, Mitchell doubled it with a homer of his own. Cue the same scene. After two late tack-on runs -- and more stunned Dodger Stadium silence -- the Brewers were on their way to a 3-0 lead in this best-of-seven NLCS.
The Dodgers’ bid for a third straight World Series title is fading. By Thursday night, it might be fully extinguished.
“We didn’t expect to be in this position,” said Kiké Hernández. “This one sucks. We’ve got to find a way to turn the page quick, because tomorrow is going to be here pretty fast. If we lose, we’re done.”
They’ve got quite the challenge in front of them. In MLB history, 42 teams have fallen behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series. Thirty-two of them have gone down quietly, via sweep. Only two have ever managed to even force a Game 7 after trailing 3-0. The Astros won Games 4, 5 and 6 vs. the Rays in the 2020 ALCS but ended up losing Game 7. Only the 2004 Red Sox, in the ALCS against the Yankees, have come all the way back to win.
The Dodgers will need that level of miracle.
“This team's won four games before,” said outfielder Kyle Tucker. “That's what we're going to have to do. So, I mean, I believe in this group.”
Still, at this point, it seems far likelier that Milwaukee could make a bit of baseball history instead. A year ago, in the very same round, facing the very same team, the Brewers were swept. If they can return the favor, they would become the first team to be swept out of the playoffs one year, only to sweep the same team in the following postseason.
“Definitely, it feels better that we have things in our favor this go-around, and we have the advantage,” Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio said through interpreter Daniel de Mondesert. “Like I said before, we have yet to complete anything.”
It took all of one pitch for the Brewers to announce their intent in Game 3. Since 1988, when pitch count data was first fully kept, only five hitters had homered on the very first pitch of a postseason game. Chourio made it six. He ambushed a fastball from Snell and launched it the other way. Milwaukee led, 1-0.
“It kind of set the tone for the day,” Bauers said, “and let everyone know that we're here to win this game.”
Snell settled in. He retired 14 straight at one point and wouldn't allow another run until that fateful seventh. He gave the Dodgers a chance, if their offense could just come to life. In the bottom of the sixth, it did.
Brewers starter Robert Gasser held Los Angeles scoreless through five. But Gasser was lifted for Abner Uribe in the sixth, and Uribe just didn’t have it. He walked three Dodgers, then surrendered Smith’s two-run double off the top of the left-center-field wall.
Smith cruised into second base and let loose a roar. The entire stadium seemed to do the same. It felt like a moment that might swing the series. The champs had arrived. The Dodgers had thrown the requisite counterpunch.
But the Brewers had an answer. They always do.
“I think it's what it's all about in the game -- to be that locked in that you respond every time,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “It's resiliency. It's a belief. It's all those things. Our guys have done it.”
Indeed, the Brewers know their way around a comeback. This was their fifth comeback win already, tying them for the most in a team’s first seven postseason games with the 1996 Yankees and 1980 Phillies (both eventual champs).
In the last two games, the Dodgers have scored runs in four separate innings. All four times, the Brewers have answered immediately with runs of their own.
“We play for each other,” Bauers said. “It's as simple as that.”
Reliever DL Hall stranded both runners after Smith’s double, and the Brewers had the life they needed. Andrew Vaughn started the seventh with a walk. Bauers followed with the plate appearance of a lifetime -- for the second time this week.
“Hat's off to him,” Snell said. “I mean, what an at-bat. I threw everything I had.”
When Bauers got a hold of that 11th pitch, he coolly dropped his bat and yelled toward his dugout. As the ball carried deep into the L.A. night, a realization seemed to dawn on the Dodger Stadium crowd.
These Brewers have had all the answers this week, and if the Dodgers can’t find one of their own on Thursday night, their quest for a three-peat will end in a sweep that felt unthinkable just four days ago.