Milwaukee beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 to take the series 4-1, capping a 57-year wait for the franchise's first championship.
The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions. They closed it out with a 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 5 in Florida on Wednesday, taking the best-of-seven Fall Classic 4-1. It is the first title in the franchise's 57-year history, and only its second World Series appearance, following a loss in 1982.
The win came a day after Tampa Bay forced a delay in the celebration with a furious 12th-inning comeback in Game 4. Milwaukee shook it off and finished the job behind a team built on pitching and situational baseball rather than brute power.
None of this should have been a surprise. The Brewers finished the regular season with MLB's best record at 103 wins, the second straight year they led baseball in that category, despite playing in the league's smallest market and carrying only the 19th-highest payroll among the 30 teams. They also had arguably the league's best starting pitcher in Jacob Misiorowski, the likely NL Cy Young winner. In the playoffs they swept the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers to avenge last year's NLCS loss, then beat the Rays to finish the job.
The Brewers now carry the title of champions into an offseason as the team that did the improbable by doing exactly what the numbers said they could.