Brewers-Rays will produce a first-time champion, and maybe the first all-indoor World Series

The Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays will play a Suds vs. Sun World Series that will produce a first-time champion and likely baseball’s first all-indoor championship.

The best-of-seven showdown between low-payroll pennant winners opens Friday night in Milwaukee. It’ll be the first World Series between title-less teams since the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Kansas City Royals in 1980 and just the second since 1910.

One city is known for the television sitcom “ Laverne & Shirley,” the home of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, cheeseheads and breweries that have included Miller, Pabst and Schlitz. The other is a vacation destination featuring warm weather, beaches and art museums.

“They’re highly athletic but so are we. I’m excited to see two great teams that play the game a little differently than maybe it’s been played the last decade or so,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said after his team defeated Cleveland in six games for the AL pennant. “We’re going to use our speed. We’re going to bunt when it’s called for. We’ll try to get matchups and I can assure you they’re going to do the same.”

Just five of the current 30 teams have never won a title, with Colorado, San Diego and Seattle also ringless.

“The city is ready. I know that the fans are ready, and I know that we’ll be ready,” said Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers, MVP of the four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series.

Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski heads the pitchers with his 100 mph-plus 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 pitch against their former team.

“I don’t know how the people, the fans are going to take it, but I’m happy to be go there,” said Peralta, the ALCS MVP. “I have a lot of people that I love over there, people that care about me and I’m happy to be there and be able to compete together and take a lot of pictures and videos.”

The Brewers started as the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969, then were bought by Bud Selig’s group in bankruptcy court and moved to Milwaukee for the 1970 season. The team’s only Series trip was a seven-game loss to St. Louis in the 1982 Suds Series, back when the Brewers were in the American League.

Tampa Bay launched as the expansion Devil Rays in 1998 and dropped the “Devil” ahead of the 2008 season. The team’s two Series appearances ended with losses to Philadelphia in 2008 and the Dodgers in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Best face each other for 6th time in wild-card era

This will be only the sixth time since the start of the wild-card era in 1995 that teams with the top records in each league 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-payroll teams in Series for first time in 35 years

Milwaukee had MLB’s 19th-highest payroll as of Aug. 31. Tampa Bay was 25th.

Not since 1991 had both pennant winners been among the bottom 50% in player spending. Minnesota was 15th among 26 teams when it beat Atlanta (19th) in seven games.

Matchup with a ceiling

Tampa Bay’s ballpark has a fixed roof and Milwaukee’s is retractable — it probably will be closed with game-time temperatures predicted to be in the upper 40s or low 50s.

When all World Series games were played at retractable-roof ballparks in 2020 (Texas) and 2023 (Texas and Arizona), there were three open-air games each year.

The roofs of both ballparks came into play this postseason.

In the ninth inning of Milwaukee’s 3-2 win over the Padres in Game 1 of their NL Division Series, San Diego’s Ty France hit a high drive that appeared it might be headed over the left-field wall for a go-ahead homer until it struck a cable on the retractable roof in Milwaukee.

Two nights later, Yankees rookie Spencer Jones hit a flyball off a catwalk at Tropicana Field that 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 ties

Greg Vaughn, Willy Adames and Matt Garza are the most prominent players with lengthy stretches 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 an assistant GM in October 2015.

One of baseball’s great nicknames

Those 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 with five future Hall of Famers: Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Rollie Fingers, Ted Simmons and Don Sutton.

Haunted hotel?

Various players over the years have claimed The Pfister Hotel, where many teams stay in Milwaukee, is haunted. Opened in 1893, the hotel has Romanesque Revival architecture, and players have claimed to hear spooky noises and footsteps.

If there is a Game 7, it would be played in Milwaukee on Halloween night.

Boss Man

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 when he was in college, then another when he was coaching at Notre Dame.

Sponsored

“He grew up a Catholic kid in New Jersey. I was a Catholic kid from upstate New York,” the 67-year-old Murphy said. “There’s just so much that resonates with me how he speaks about things.”

Ballpark histories

The 1982 Series was played at Milwaukee County Stadium, home of the Braves from 1953-65 before they moved to Atlanta, and then the Brewers from 1970-2000. This year’s championship will be played at American Family Field. Known as Miller Park from 2001-20, the ballpark is adjacent to the County Stadium site. It was host of the 2002 All-Star Game, which ended in a 7-7, 11-inning tie 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 has the Uecker Seat in the last row of section 422 in the left-field upper deck — it includes a bronze statue of Bob Uecker, the beloved funny man who broadcast Brewers games for 54 seasons until his death last year.

Tampa Bay’s home, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, is on its third name. Known as the Florida Suncoast Dome from 1990-93 and the ThunderDome from 1993-96, the stadium got its current name about 18 months before the Rays’ first game in 1998.

Its only prior World Series games were in 2008, when the Rays split the first two games against Philadelphia before the Phillies won three straight at home. Tampa Bay’s other Series appearance was in 2020, when due to the coronavirus pandemic the entire series was played at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

The Trop reopened this season after repairs to damage caused by Hurricane Milton. The Rays plan to move to a new stadium across the bay in Tampa in 2029.

Jersey watch

Milwaukee went 29-13 in cream uniforms during the regular season, 17-7 in pinstripes, 27-12 in navy blue, 9-6 in City Connect outfits 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 home white, 32-33 in road navy, 8-2 in road Columbia blue, 12-3 in Devil Rays throwback jerseys, 6-4 in City Connect and 3-3 in road gray. In the playoffs, the Rays are 2-1 in home white, 2-0 in Devil Rays throwbacks 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 batters had in their NLCS sweep of the Brewers last year.

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