The Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays will play a Souths vs. Sun World Series that will produce a first champion and likely baseball’s first all-indoor championship.
The best-of-seven showdown between low payroll pennant winners opens Friday night in Milwaukee. This will be the first World Series between teams without a title since the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Kansas City Royals in 1980 and only the second since 1910.
A town is known for the television sitcom ” Laverne & Shirley”, the home of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, cheeseheads and breweries that include Miller, Pabst and Schlitz. The other is a vacation destination with a warm climate, beaches and art museums.
“They’re very athletic, but so are we. I’m excited to see two great teams playing the game a little differently than maybe it’s been played over the last decade,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said after his team. beat Cleveland in six games for the AL pennant. “We will use our speed. We will cushion when necessary. We will try to get confrontations and I can assure you they will do the same.”
Only five of the current 30 teams have never won a title, with Colorado, San Diego and Seattle also without a ring.
“The city is ready. I know the fans are ready, and I know we will be ready,” said Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers, the team’s MVP. four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series.
Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski leads the pitchers with his 100-plus mph heat, and each team features a dynamic 22-year-old anchoring the lineup: Jackson Chourio of the Brewers and Junior Caminero of the Rays. Tampa Bay’s Freddy Peralta and Drew Rasmussen could face their former team.
“I don’t know how the people, the fans are going to take it, but I’m happy to go,” said Peralta, the ALCS MVP. “I have a lot of people I love there, people who care about me and I’m happy to be there and be able to compete together and take a lot of photos and videos.”
The Brewers began as an expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969, then were bought out of bankruptcy court by Bud Selig’s group and moved to Milwaukee for the 1970 season. The team’s only trip to the playoffs was a seven-game loss to St. Louis in the 1982 South Series, back when the Brewers were in the American League.
Tampa Bay launched the expansion Devil Rays in 1998 and abandoned the “Devil” before the 2008 season. The team’s two playoff appearances ended in losses to Philadelphia in 2008 and the Dodgers in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
The best face each other for the 6th time in the wild-card era
This will be only the sixth time since the start of the wild-card era in 1995 that the teams with the best records in each league will meet in the World Series after Atlanta-Cleveland (1995), New York Yankees-Braves (1999), Boston-St. Louis (2013), Dodgers-Rays (2020) And Dodgers-Yankees (2024).
Two low-salary teams in series for the first time in 35 years
Milwaukee had the 19th highest payroll in MLB as of August 31. Tampa Bay was 25th.
Not since 1991 have the two pennant winners been among the bottom 50% in terms of player spending. Minnesota was 15th out of 26 teams in beating Atlanta (19th) in seven games.
Matchup with a cap
Tampa Bay’s ballpark has a fixed roof and Milwaukee’s is retractable — it will likely be closed with game temperatures forecast around the 40s or lower 50s.
When all World Series games were played in retractable-roof stadiums in 2020 (Texas) and 2023 (Texas and Arizona), there were three outdoor games each year.
The roofs of both stadiums came into play during these playoffs.
In the ninth inning of Milwaukee’s 3-2 victory over the Padres in Game 1 of their NL Division Series, San Diego’s Ty France hit a high workout It looked like he might be heading toward the left-field wall for a home run until he hit a cable on the retractable roof in Milwaukee.
Two nights later, Yankees rookie Spencer Jones hit a flyball on a podium at Tropicana Field who was caught by Rays right fielder Victor Mesa Jr. for an out in the second inning of New York’s 5-2 loss in Game 2 of their AL Division Series.
Common links
Greg Vaughn, Willy Adames and Matt Garza are the highest-profile players with long stints on both teams, and Bauers made his big league debut with the Rays in 2018.
Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold worked for the Rays for nine years before Milwaukee hired him as assistant general manager in October 2015.
One of the great nicknames in baseball
These 1982 Brewers were known as Harvey’s Wallbangers, a nickname given by first baseman Cecil Cooper. The Brewers led the major leagues in home runs under manager Harvey Kuenn and had a roster of five future Hall of Famers: Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Rollie Fingers, Ted Simmons and Don Sutton.
A haunted hotel?
Over the years, various players have claimed that the Pfister Hotel, where many teams stay in Milwaukee, is haunted. Opened in 1893, the hotel features neo-Romanesque architecture and players have claimed to hear creepy noises and footsteps.
If there is a Game 7, it would be played in Milwaukee on Halloween night.
Boss
Milwaukee’s Pat Murphy, winner of the last two NL Manager of the Year awards, has two tattoos referencing Bruce Springsteen: “No Retreat No Surrender” on his left forearm and “The Boss” on his back.
He first went to a Springsteen concert in 1980 while he was in college, then another while he was coaching at Notre Dame.
“He grew up as a Catholic kid in New Jersey. I was a Catholic kid in upstate New York,” Murphy, 67, said. “There are so many things that touch me about the way he talks about things.”
Rough stories
The 1982 Series was played at Milwaukee County Stadium, home of the Braves from 1953 to 1965 before moving to Atlanta, then the Brewers from 1970 to 2000. This year’s championship will be played at American Family Field. Known as Miller Park from 2001 to 2020, the ballpark is adjacent to the site of County Stadium. It was host to the 2002 All-Star Game, which ended in a 7-7 tie in 11 innings after both teams ran out of pitchers.
Milwaukee’s ballpark is known for its Racing Sausages in the middle of the sixth inning, with the Brat, Polish, Italian, Hot Dog and Chorizo competing. It also includes the Uecker seat in the last row of section 422, on the left upper deck. It includes a bronze statue of Bob Uecker, the beloved funny man who broadcast Brewers games for 54 seasons until his arrival. death last year.
Tampa Bay’s home, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, is getting its third name. Known as the Florida Suncoast Dome from 1990 to 1993 and ThunderDome from 1993 to 1996, the stadium got its current name approximately 18 months before the Rays’ first game in 1998.
His only previous World Series appearances came in 2008, when the Rays split the first two games against Philadelphia before the Phillies won three in a row at home. Tampa Bay’s other appearance in the series came in 2020, when due to the coronavirus pandemic, the entire series was played at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
Le Trop reopened this season after repairing the damage caused by Hurricane Milton. The Rays plan to move to a new stadium across Tampa Bay in 2029.
Jersey watch
Milwaukee went 29-13 in cream uniforms during the regular season, 17-7 in pinstripes, 27-12 in navy, 9-6 in City Connect uniforms and 21-21 in light blue. During the postseason, the Brewers are 4-0 in Cream and 3-1 in Navy.
Tampa Bay was 36-19 in white at home, 32-33 in navy blue, 8-2 in Columbia blue, 12-3 in Devil Rays throwback jerseys, 6-4 in City Connect and 3-3 in road gray. In the postseason, the Rays are 2-1 in white, 2-0 in Devil Rays comebacks and 3-1 in road gray.
Mirror mirror
Milwaukee was 32 for 128 (.250) and had a .347 on-base percentage in its NLCS sweep of the Dodgers, the exact same numbers Los Angeles hitters had in their NLCS sweep of the Brewers last year.
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