Milwaukee Brewers defeat Tampa Bay Rays to claim first World Series title – NBC News

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The Milwaukee Brewers’ 57-season wait for a World Series title ended Wednesday as their victory over Tampa Bay completed one of the most dominant postseason runs in MLB history.
Once closer Trevor Megill induced a soft ground ball for the last out and their 4-1 win over the Rays in Game 5 was final, the Brewers rushed up the steps of their dugout and onto the playing field at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The celebration had been in the making for more than half a century.
“This is one of the greatest moments of my life,” Brewers shortstop Cooper Pratt said on Fox after the game. “Oh my gosh. It doesn’t even feel real. This is surreal.”
After having relocated from Seattle to Milwaukee and played for the first time as the Brewers in 1970, the team didn’t make the World Series until 1982, when it lost in seven games. It then waited 44 years to make its return to the Fall Classic.
For a franchise starved for big moments, this year’s team supplied one after another.
The Brewers’ 12-2 postseason record is among the best since the MLB postseason format expanded in 1995 to include wild-card teams. The Brewers’ .857 winning percentage was just off the percentages produced by the 1999 New York Yankees and the 2005 Chicago White Sox, which each went 11-1 en route to their own titles.
“I don’t even have words,” star pitcher Jacob Misiorowski, who threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings of the clinching game, told Fox after the Game 5 win.
Milwaukee is MLB’s smallest market. Its payroll ranked only 19th out of 30 teams. In 12 postseason games, it trailed nine times. But the Brewers won seven of those games by finding ways to prevail in multiple ways. Milwaukee hit seven home runs in a National League Championship Series sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers yet took a 3-0 series lead on Tampa Bay while hitting just one homer. In Game 5, Milwaukee drove in runs using two singles, a sacrifice fly and a double.
Down to its final out in the bottom of the ninth inning, Tampa Bay got on the board when Chandler Simpson’s two-out double drove in Liam Hicks to trim the deficit to 4-1. With hard-throwing reliever Aaron Ashby waiting to relieve Megill in case he got into any more trouble, a soft grounder ended the game.
Catcher William Contreras earned Most Valuable Player honors after driving in four runs and hitting .381 during the World Series.
“I don’t have words to say,” Contreras said through a translator.
This was no fluke by a scrappy team that got hot at the right time. Milwaukee had the second-best record in baseball at July’s All-Star break and ultimately won an MLB-high and franchise-record 103 games. After it beat San Diego in the divisional round, it swept two-time reigning champion Los Angeles in the National League Championship Series. Even though the Dodgers’ payroll was more than double the Brewers’, Milwaukee scored 10 more runs over the sweep to secure a World Series berth against Tampa Bay.
The Rays were in some ways a mirror image of Milwaukee, another light-spending franchise looking to turn its regular-season success — the Rays had won the most games in the American League — into its first World Series victory.
“Best feeling ever,” Christian Yelich, the Brewers’ captain, said on the broadcast.
After one-run wins in the first two games of the World Series — including a Game 2 comeback in which Milwaukee fell behind 4-0 in the first inning — it won Game 3 in a 10-1 rout sparked by Christian Yelich’s stolen base in the fifth inning. When a challenge ruled Yelich safe at second base, Milwaukee proceeded to score eight runs with two outs, blowing the game open without ever hitting a home run.
Milwaukee’s championship run was possible thanks to a dependable core of players who spanned generations. Yelich, 34, and 33-year-old reliever Brandon Woodruff, whose save in Game 3 was his first appearance since July 4 because of injuries, were the only players remaining from a 2018 Brewers roster that was just one win away from that season’s World Series.
In the divisional round against San Diego, 20-year-old outfielder Jackson Chourio hit a late two-run homer that saved Milwaukee in its opening game of the postseason. Chourio then delivered a walk-off single to win the following game.
On the mound, Milwaukee constructed a feared rotation of arms starting with Misiorowski, the 24-year-old with blazing speed who made the All-Star Game as a rookie in 2025 after just five starts. For his encore, Misiorowski in 2026 led a pitching staff that allowed MLB’s second-lowest team ERA during the regular season. When he left games, a bullpen with arms just as nasty and hard-throwing as Misiorowski’s took over.
“This is just incredible,” Megill, on the mound for the final out, said after the win. “Ten-year-old me would be so proud.”
All of the pieces worked, all season. When the regular season ended, Milwaukee stood alone at the top of the standings.
And when the playoffs ended a month later, the Brewers were on top yet again. Their long wait for a title had ended.
Andrew Greif is a sports reporter for NBC News Digital. 
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