The Milwaukee Brewers are headed back to the World Series, and the first thing they did with the champagne was look backward.
After sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the National League pennant, the Brewers had custom bottle labels made for the clubhouse celebration, honoring players from past and present Milwaukee postseason teams. Not just this roster. Not just the stars who got them here. The whole lineage.
That's not a small thing for a franchise that has spent most of its existence waiting for nights like this one.
what happened with the brewers champagne labels
The details are simple and, frankly, pretty classy. Milwaukee's NLCS clinch came with bottles carrying the names of former Brewers who wore the uniform in other October runs, present-day players sharing the label with guys from teams decades removed from this one. It's the kind of move a franchise makes when it understands exactly what it means to its own fan base to get back here.
Because Milwaukee doesn't get back here often.
The Dodgers series itself was a sweep, four straight, the kind of result that gets analysts on national television asking whether a small-market team running through the defending juggernaut is good or bad for the sport. That debate will run for days. The Brewers, for their part, spent their celebration pointing at the uniforms that came before theirs instead of just their own.
From the almanac: milwaukee's only previous World Series appearance came in 1982, when harvey's wallbangers took the cardinals to seven games and lost. that's 44 years of carrying a pennant drought that this current group just ended, and the franchise clearly knows it.
what comes next for milwaukee
The World Series opponent isn't settled yet. The American League Championship Series between Cleveland and Tampa Bay is still being played out, with Cleveland in position to move one win from the pennant and the Rays looking to even things up. Whichever club survives that series will be who the Brewers see first.
In the meantime, Milwaukee gets a rare gift in October: a few days to exhale. A pennant clinched early, against a team many expected to roll through October, buys this roster something other postseason teams don't get, which is time to set a rotation, manage a bullpen that's been worked hard all month, and let bodies that took bumps in the NLCS get right before the lights come back on.
For a franchise that's been to exactly one World Series in its history before this one, that kind of patience is a luxury worth having.
What I'm watching next is simple: who survives the ALCS, and how banged up they are when they get there. Milwaukee earned itself a little rest. The team on the other side of that series isn't getting any.