LOS ANGELES — Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attansio leaned against the visiting clubhouse wall Wednesday night, standing under a picture of clouds hovering over Dodger Stadium, and feeling as if he were on Cloud 9 himself, reached for his cell phone.
He looked at the time. He hesitated.
And decided to make the call.
He telephoned Bud Selig, who brought the Brewers from Seattle in 1970, and whose family owned the Brewers for 35 years.
Selig answered the call at 10:48 Central Time in his Milwaukee home.
“Commissioner, can you believe this?" Attanasio said.
Attanasio apologized for the late call, and said that he worried he woke him up, only for Selig to say, “How can I sleep after that?"
“What a remarkable story," Selig said. “What a remarkable story."
The Brewers, in the smallest market in baseball, have completely dominated the Los Angeles Dodgers in this National League Championship Series, and are on the verge of reaching the World Series for the first time in 44 years.
They won 6-2 in front of a subdued non-sellout crowd of 50,708, and lead the Dodgers, 3 games to 0, with the potential clinching game Thursday night at Dodger Stadium.
The Dodgers are done, with only one team in baseball history ever recovering from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series, and these aren’t the 2004 Boston Red Sox.
The Brewers, who were swept by the Dodgers a year ago in the NLCS without leading a single inning, now are returning the favor in front of a stunned Los Angeles team that was trying to become the first National League club to win three consecutive World Series titles.
The Brewers are squashing that dream for all of the baseball world to see.
One more victory and the Brewers will join the 1923 New York Yankees as the only team to be swept by a team in the previous postseason and win a postseason series against the same team the next season. And no one has ever been swept and come back to sweep the same opponent the following season.
Oh, what a difference a year makes.
The Brewers not only remember that sweep, but used it the entire season to motivate them, knowing that anything less than a World Series appearance would be a failure. Brewers manager Pat Murphy vividly remembers the words he told his team after being swept in Los Angeles last year.
“Hey guys, remember this. It hurts, remember it,’’ Murphy said. “I think they remembered so far."
Oh, do they ever.
“It’s a real thing,’’ Brewers second baseman Brice Turang said. “I don’t think any player wants that feeling ever again.
Outfielder Sal Frelick has been to the postseason four consecutive years with the Brewers, but every single year October has brought heartbreak. They were swept in the wild-card series in 2023 by the Arizona Diamondbacks. They lost in 2024 to the Mets on Pete Alonso’s dramatic game-winning homer in the ninth inning of the deciding game. They finally won a series last year when they ousted the rival Cubs in five games, but then came the Dodgers sweep.
“It just leaves you with such a sour taste in your mouth,’ Frelick said.
But now here they are, knowing they are on the brink of history, joining that illustrious 1982 team that reached the World Series before losing in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals.
For the first time in 44 years – yes, that’s Hank Aaron’s number – they can be pennant winners.
“I didn’t even know that number," Frelick said. “I’m not really thinking about stuf like that. We don’t even thnk about stuff like that. It’s just confined within these walls, keeping to ourselves.’’
So, no thoughts at all about the euphoria of reaching the World Series, and what it would mean to Milwaukee?
“I haven’t heard that in here," Frelick said. “No one’s even mentioned it."
Says Megill: “We’re not talking about that. We’ve got one more game to go. Then we can talk about it all you want"’
Murphy, in fact, will barely even concede that they’re in the driver’s seat, knowing the Dodgers’ glorious history.
“The Dodgers are an incredible team that's won back-to-back championships," Murphy said. “You think they're not good enough to come back and win a game against us or come back and play well? I mean, I know how good they are. Our guys know how good they are. Our guys know what we're up against."
Well, pardon everyone else in Milwaukee thinking about the World Series and knowing that this team could be remembered forever.
There are Brewer fans that can tell their grandkids about Jake Bauers, who two years ago planned to retire – only to change his mind when he learned his wife was pregnant and needed health insurance – to become the hero for a second consecutive game, this time hitting a go-ahead home run off two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell on the 11th pitch of the at-bat. One batter later, left-handed hitting Garrett Mitchell homered too, becoming the first pair of left-handed hitters to hit back-to-back homers off a lefty in the LCS or World Series since Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the 1928 World Series.
“We play for each other, it’s as simple as that, man," Bauers says. “When you have 26 guys that are bought into that and believe that and show up every day, completely selfless, playing for each other, it's a special thing to be a part of."
They will talk about a bullpen that has given up just three runs this entire postseason, with a closer, Trevor Megill, that was picked up from the scrap heap by the Minnesota Twins.
They will talk about a team that has only one player on the roster earning more than $10 million beating up a filthy rich team with 15 players making at least $10 million, including a $700 million man in Shohei Ohtani.
They’ll talk about a former boxer who became a college baseball coach, who was hired by one of his former players to be the Brewers bench coach, with Pat Murphy now on the precipice of being the Brewers’ version of Vince Lombardi.
“It’s almost too much to take, right?" Attanasio said. “What’s great about this group is that they’re young enough that they don’t get caught up in history, so they don’t get burned by history."
It’s hard for it sink in now, Attanasio says, but in 15, 20 years, they may all be reminiscing, talking about the good ol’ days, and repeating Selig’s refrain.
“Hopefully," Attanasio said, “I’ll be able to say just like Commissioner Selig: 'It’s a remarkable story.' "
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: One win from World Series, these Milwaukee Brewers are simply 'remarkable'
