I grew up a Brewers fan back when it would have been easy to give up on the hometown team and root for anyone else.
From 1993 through 2004, the Brewers had a losing record every year, according to Baseball-Reference. Seven of those 12 teams won fewer than 70 games. Two of them played strike-shortened seasons. The rest had no excuse. The 2002 team went 56-106.
Back then, even the expectations were modest. Maybe they could finish .500, maybe they could finish above last in the division. Even in the film Mr. 3000, the Brewers are out of playoff contention, and hoping to finish third place in their division. Even Hollywood knew the Brewers ceiling was middling at best. The 2005 team went 81-81, exactly .500, then slid back to 75-87 in 2006. The first winning season came in 2007. The Brewers went from the 1982 World Series to 2008 without a playoff game.
So for many Brewers fans like me, this October is something special.
Those years gave me a useless superpower. I can go name-for-name with anyone wanting to list random Brewers of the 1990s and early 2000s. Russell Branyan. Ruben Quevedo. Ben Hendrickson. Chad Moeller
County Stadium and Miller Park bring back so many memories, but it wasn’t all trophies and wins. Some days it was the tarps. I sat through more than one rainout at County Stadium, waiting on a game that was never going to start. Thankfully, Miller Park / American Family Field’s roof eliminated those.
I was at County Stadium when Robin Yount got his 3,000th hit in 1992. It was a routine single to right. I was too young to understand why the entire stadium around me was losing its mind. Years later, I realized I had watched a Hall of Famer do something few players ever do.
Then there was senior skip day. My friends and I piled into my Pontiac Safari station wagon for an afternoon Brewers game in May against the Cubs. Wes Helms came off the bench and hit a home run in his only at-bat, and the Brewers won 6-5 on a walk-off Carlos Lee single. It also capped a seven-game winning streak, and we swept the Cubs. I know because I brought a broom out after the game and a Cubs fan snapped it over his knee. While we were tailgating postgame, an undercover cop wandered over, curious about the bottles in our hands. We were drinking Sprecher sodas; I offered him one. It took me years to realize it was an undercover cop.
I was there the first time the Brewers brought back the old ball-in-glove logo for Sunday home games. For a lot of us, that logo stood for the good years we had only heard about. My friends remember that day for a prank that backfired. One buddy was running late, so we left a brat on our tiny Weber grill for him. We figured he’d show up to a charred brick. He never got the chance. Before we arrived, someone had stolen the grill.
Growing up, I worked at a country club where Bob Uecker was a member; he wasn’t there often. I only cleaned his clubs a couple of times. I never talked baseball with him. I figured everyone did. I asked him about Mr. Belvedere instead, and he was funny.
My dad was a lifelong fan. He grew up with the Philadelphia A’s, and when the Braves left Milwaukee, he made the Brewers his team. He died in 2012. He may have been the biggest Ryan Braun fan there was, and not just because Braun could hit. He admired his faith as well. My dad got to see the Brewers back in the playoffs. Like so many of you, he’s the someone I wish could be seeing this.
For most of my life, the Brewers were not a winner. They were a place to be with your people, from games with my Dad, family friends, to senior skip day and bachelor parties. From seats so close you could smell the grass to bleacher seats with local superfans.
Now they are a winner, too.
The 2026 Brewers won 103 games, the most in franchise history. They swept the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. On Monday night in St. Petersburg, they beat the Rays 10-1 for a 3-0 lead in the World Series. The game turned in the fifth inning. With two outs, the Brewers scored eight runs on seven straight hits. MLB.com reported no team had ever done either in a World Series.
What struck me was the noise. Tropicana Field is the Rays’ home, but a “Let’s go, Brewers” chant broke out in the eighth. StubHub data cited by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel showed 21% of Game 3 tickets went to buyers in Wisconsin ZIP codes. In Milwaukee, only 2% to 3% of tickets went to Florida buyers.
Wisconsin was watching, too. Fox Sports reported that seven of every 10 TVs in use in the Milwaukee market were tuned to Game 1. That was the best local number for a World Series opener in seven years. Milwaukee is the smallest media market in Major League Baseball.
And we are buying. Sports Business Journal reported the Brewers sold more merchandise in the 48 hours after clinching the pennant than any pennant winner on record. CBS 58 reported the team store at American Family Field set a single-day franchise record after Game 1.
But this isn’t about merch or ticket sales. It is about a state that kept showing up for 56-106 and 68-94, and believed there were brighter days ahead. It is a state that kept the team in Milwaukee when it could have let them walk.
The kid who didn’t get why a routine single to right mattered gets it now. And I’ll be thinking about my dad and rooting for one more win.
