The Brewers had the means to end the Dodgers

“They may have a bunch of Hall of Famers, but we’ve got a bunch of gamers.” - Pat Murphy, Brewers manager

Before the Brewers were the counterpoint in a labor battle, before they were appointed David to the Dodgers’ Goliath, they were a much simpler thing: A baseball team practicing winning baseball games.

They’ve gotten good at it.

Since 2018, when Christian Yelich arrived and kickstarted the current era of Brewers baseball into motion, they have the fourth-most wins in baseball. Since 2023, when top executive David Stearns stepped down and handed the reins to Matt Arnold, they’re second behind the Dodgers. Since 2024, when Craig Counsell left and Pat Murphy stepped into the manager’s role, they’re first.

In the meantime, they ran into failure, and they learned and got better and ran into failure again. They tried things that worked, hit limits — three times dressed in Dodger blue — and pushed and found more things that worked and pushed until they discovered exactly where they stopped working.

The whole process was not easy, was better and more productive for not being easy. You’ll see Brewers players talk about it, about Murphy’s standards and the expectations that can grate on them over the longest, most rigorous season in sports.

“You have to be a certain kind of player to play for Murph and to play here,” Yelich told reporters in August, after Murphy pulled rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt from a game for a lack of hustle. “You couldn’t coach that way throughout the league. You really couldn’t.”

You can see it in Murphy’s strategic needling of his own team, cutting violently away at anything that might dull their focus. And you can see it in his gentle praise, his doting in moments of doubt.

“All I know is that on Aug. 12, we have the best record in baseball,” Murphy said right after the Brewers got swept by the Padres, right before they went to Dodger Stadium and took a confidence-building three of four. “And if you've got the best record in baseball, you're still going to go through times like this when things aren't very good, and everything seems to go against you. But it's in your head that things are going against you.”

They practiced, got called out when they fell short, and practiced, and got praised when they hit their marks.

Last year, it led to 97 wins in the regular season, the most in baseball, but they got trounced four times in a row against the Dodgers. This year, the Brewers won 103 times in the regular season, the most in baseball, again. Faced with the Dodgers, again, they won four times in a row, and they’re going to the World Series.

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“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.” - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

If a genie or a god or a world-altering dream granted median baseball fans three wishes this spring, I think the most common ask would have been for their team to win the World Series, and the next most common would have been for the Dodgers not to win the World Series. A particularly enraged few might have asked for the Dodgers’ demise ahead of all else. And an even smaller, more conspiracy-brained sect would have sought the opposite: A third straight championship for the Dodgers, with the conviction it would create more conducive conditions for the introduction of a salary cap and a lasting shift in fortunes for their team.