LOS ANGELES -- A step shy of the left-center-field warning track, Jackson Chourio landed with the pennant-clinching final out tucked safely in his outstretched glove. He couldn’t help himself. He broke into an ear-to-ear smile, and just kept running.
The Brewers poured out of their dugout and converged at the Dodger Stadium mound, setting off a party that soon moved to a podium in center field, then to a beer-soaked visiting clubhouse and, eventually, to an airplane bound for Milwaukee. Where, for the first time since 1982, the World Series will be played next week.
For 363 days, the Brewers dreamed of a different ending. On Thursday night, they wrote it.
The two-time defending champion Dodgers have been dethroned. For the first time in 44 years, the Brewers are heading to the World Series. They beat Los Angeles, 6-4, on Thursday night, completing a stunning four-game sweep in the National League Championship Series.
“They may have a bunch of Hall of Famers, but we’ve got a bunch of gamers,” said Brewers manager Pat Murphy. “And the gamers won this week.”
The script? Familiar enough. An NLCS sweep culminating at Dodger Stadium. Only this time, it was the Brewers celebrating an NL pennant decades in the making -- and celebrating in the very ballpark where their previous season had come to such an unceremonious end.
Three times in the last decade, the Brewers had been expelled from the postseason by Los Angeles. A year ago, they were swept away with relative ease, as the Dodgers set a course for their second consecutive World Series title. It went unspoken, but all summer, the Brewers seemed to know: If they were going to get where they wanted to go, this was the team they needed to beat.
“We were playing with that chip on our shoulder,” said left-hander Aaron Ashby, who recorded the final nine outs on Thursday. “We came back this year and those guys played their tails off. I would die for any of these dudes, man.”
Swept away at Dodger Stadium a season ago, the Brewers became the first team in MLB history to return the favor in the following postseason. No team had previously been swept, then returned to the playoffs the following year and swept the very same opponent.
Until these Brewers. It was quite a statement. The Dodgers built a juggernaut that won consecutive World Series and were widely favored for a three-peat. They were thoroughly dispatched.
“At the end of the day, we got beat,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “We got outplayed in all facets. Those guys played flawless -- defensively, they pitched better than we did, they hit better than we did, they slugged more than we did. You've got to sometimes just tip your cap.”
Thursday’s clincher did not come easy. Why should it? These Brewers don’t do easy. They fell behind 4-0 in the second inning. Dodger Stadium shook when Shohei Ohtani’s titanic three-run blast landed deep in the right-field pavilion.
But the Brewers did what these Brewers do. They answered. Two runs in the fourth. Two more in the fifth. Garrett Mitchell’s go-ahead home run in the sixth, and David Hamilton’s insurance blast in the ninth. The four-run comeback tied the largest to clinch an LCS in MLB history. (The Yankees overcame four-run deficits to clinch the AL pennant in both 2000 and ‘03.)
“For these guys to come back from a 4-0 deficit -- I think the Dodgers figured out that we came in here with a little different attitude this year,” Murphy said.
Across four games, every punch the Dodgers threw was returned with a Milwaukee counterpunch. Facing elimination on Thursday, Roberts moved Ohtani back into the leadoff spot. If the Dodgers were going to go down … why go down with anyone else at the top of their lineup?
That meant it was Ohtani who strode to the plate against Brewers right-hander Dustin May with two on and two out in the second. May threw a 1-1 cutter. It hung. Ohtani unleashed that ferocious left-handed swing with a bit of an uppercut. (You know the one, even if it had been a while since you last saw it.) The ball carried to the very back of the right-field pavilion, Ohtani’s first home run since Aug. 18.
Dodger Stadium erupted. The champs had life. They led, 4-0 in the second inning. They had Tarik Skubal lined up for Game 5. And Yoshinobu Yamamoto for Game 6. And Blake Snell for Game 7. Maybe, just maybe …
“There was no doubt in my mind that we were going to get to a Game 5, and my thought process was I’m going to get Yama the ball in Game 6, and we’ll see what happens,” said Skubal. “But baseball -- it’s hard to win. And that team played really well.”
Especially when they fell behind. The Brewers became the first team to begin a postseason with six comeback victories in their first eight games. This was the biggest yet. Trailing 4-0, William Contreras and Jake Bauers halved the deficit with back-to-back doubles in the fourth. An inning later, Hamilton’s RBI single and Bauers’ bases-loaded walk tied the game.
Mitchell led off the sixth by pulverizing a Tanner Scott fastball, and the Brewers had the lead. They held onto it for dear life. Ashby stranded the tying run in scoring position in the seventh. Then again in the eighth.
In the ninth, Hamilton got a hanging slider from Edwin Díaz and launched it to the right-field pavilion. A hush settled over Dodger Stadium, quickly broken up by a few scattered Brewers fans on hand to witness a moment they’d surely been waiting for their entire lives.
Milwaukee had never won a National League pennant. Its last -- and only -- trip to the Fall Classic came as a member of the American League in 1982. That ended in heartbreak, a seven-game defeat at the hands of St. Louis.
In the decades since, the Brewers have never been this close to that elusive first World Series title. Either the Rays or the Guardians will stand in their way, with Game 1 at American Family Field set for next Friday night.
But first, a party 44 years in the making.