NLCS has reached the end of the line as Brewers, Dodgers arrive at Game 7
MILWAUKEE – In the course of eight days, they’d played to a draw. The series hadn’t been quite riveting, not yet, outside of the fact they couldn’t seem to get out of each other’s way. To fill some of the time they’d given away free hamburgers here, and free beer here, and come upon a distaste for the opposing shortstop here, and beyond that the series had become an extended test of everyone’s abilities to see through the smoke and mirrors and double switches.
The National League Championship Series has found its terminus, here in what used to be a parking lot next to County Stadium, the site of the last World Series to have visited this town. That was going on four decades ago. It did not end well for the locals. On Friday night, the newer place packed, they pleaded for another ballgame. Just one more. For now.
So they stood and cheered here, and booed some, and strained to get a glimpse of Game 7, of what even could follow that. They see, perhaps, a team on the brink of greatness, risen up from the division of Cubs and Cardinals, from the memories of Yount and Oglivie and Gorman and Molitor, Harvey’s boys, way out here in the old parking lot.
These Milwaukee Brewers are not as worn as the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose only chance at even a crumb of satisfaction is not one more win but five. The Brewers, turns out, are as game. As desperate. As obsessed. As skilled. And so now they’ll play a ninth day, a seventh game. The rest – how they got here, who did what and why, who gets on a plane for Boston as a result, who starts emptying lockers into trash bags, who gets drunk and silly, who heists a beer from the back fridge and stuffs it into their pocket for later – lives in another place.
What exists instead is the rookie, Walker Buehler, who’ll draw back those spiny shoulders and fasten that smirk to his face and spit those tracers from his right hand. And the veteran, Jhoulys Chacín, who’ll maybe recount the steps that put him here, all those steps over all those years, who’ll know that nights like these don’t come around but once in a lifetime, in the best of lifetimes. Then he’ll throw a slider, probably.
What exists is a fully rested Josh Hader, alongside a manager with an itchy trigger finger. A rested Kenley Jansen, who once not so long ago in a series not unlike this one discovered there was perhaps more fight in him than he suspected. An available Clayton Kershaw. Guys on both sides lining up for a piece of whatever comes. One team hitting .210, the other .235, doesn’t matter which is which. One team outspending the other in payroll twice over, doesn’t matter which. One team playing these types of games every year, it seems, the other new to the game again. Doesn’t matter which.
There’s an entire city out there that isn’t thinking, Geez, why isn’t this easier? That understands this is what it looks like when baseball comes to fall, if it does. And Los Angeles, too, which maybe is losing patience with its team, which maybe can’t understand how five division titles turns into no parades, which maybe can hardly breathe now that Game 6 was gone in a few lousy minutes, and how 30 years can go by so fast.
So what exists instead is a Brewers team that could hardly rest in its efforts to drag down the Chicago Cubs, all the way into an extra regular-season Monday. Just as the Dodgers once found themselves nine games out of first place, just as the evidence was saying that late empty run from last October had finally taken their fight, they too requiring the additional Monday. They both late Friday night claimed that sort of spirit, the notion they’d been playing must-win-can’t-lose games since they could remember. So what’s one more? Hell, keep ‘em coming. Because the best result from Saturday night will only bring a bunch more, against what most would agree would be their firmest test yet.
“It can’t be a disappointment,” Jansen said after the Brewers beat the Dodgers, 7-2, in Game 6. “The season’s not over. There’s still 27 outs to play.
“Since August we’ve been playing for our lives. So here we are again.”
At about the same time, Mike Moustakas, the third baseman who’d seen this sort of team in this sort of town before, who’d lifted the Kansas City Royals into two World Series, was drawing the same comparison. He’d only just gotten here, but you know what you know, you see the same pained faces and the same hope and the same giddy hugs.
“The buzz is real,” Moustakas said, adding later, “The small-market atmosphere is more personable. It’s fun to come out and enjoy this with the fans, with this electric crowd. It’s very similar as Kansas City in that way. I’ve only been here for a couple months. Ryan [Braun] has been here for years. But the fan base has been here for however long. That’s how we looked at it in Kansas City. We’re here just to help to get to the World Series and win it. But the fan base has been fans for longer than I’ve been playing. It means so much for us to try to win it for them.”
They all have their reasons. They all had one more game to play. One of them will recall Game 7 as part of some greater achievement, some ridiculous journey that refused to end. The other will remember it bitterly, as the cruelest of ends.
It’ll matter which. Yeah, it’ll matter then.
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