'Ready to go to the World Series': Cincinnati Reds send message to Milwaukee Brewers, MLB

To most of these young Cincinnati Reds, victories against the Milwaukee Brewers have been so hard to come by in their careers that Monday’s big win against the division rivals carried so much weight they talked about things like setting a tone for the season and playing with chips on their shoulders.

One of them even dropped a “World Series” reference into that conversation.

On April 8? World Series? Did we hear Elly De La Cruz right? He’s calling his October shot for this team before tax day?

“Yeah,” De La Cruz said. “We’re ready to go.”

Then again, when the best athlete in the majors hits one pitch 450 feet on a line from the left side and hits another pitch from the right side past a diving center fielder and turns it into an inside-the-park home run with what teammate Will Benson estimates to be “30-mph or something” sprint speed, who’s going to believe he can’t do anything he says he can?

He became only the third Red to hit home runs from both sides of the plate in a game, first since Javier Valentin 19 years ago (Pete Rose did it twice, in 1966 and '67).

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Whether these Reds reach that World Series, their path to October might well go through the new-look Brewers, motivationally and inspirationally, if not competitively, by the time the next 149 games after this series are played.

Even manager David Bell seemed to suggest at least as much to the team in a pregame meeting before they went out and jumped the defending National League Central champs for eight quick runs on the way to a 10-8 victory in Monday’s opener of a four-game series.

“Before that game, DB said let’s just set the tone and let them know who we are right away,” Benson said. “And we came out of the gate and did that.”

De La Cruz reached on an error with one out in the second, taking second on the bad throw, then stole third and scored the first run of the game on a grounder. Benson followed with a home run.

Benson was the lead man on a double steal during a six-run fourth, which came a few batters after De La Cruz had singled and wound up scoring from first on a sacrifice bunt — albeit with another bad throw involved.

In other words, "who we are."

“Personally I love playing the Brewers just because of that little chip,” Benson said.

Chip?

When it comes to owning the Reds, Bob Castellini is just renting.

The Brewers have owned these guys for so long that the Reds haven’t been able to win a season series against the Brewers in almost a decade without most of the season being wiped out by a pandemic.

They lost 15 of the last 19 meetings, dating to 2022, before Monday.

“It’s so important,” De La Cruz said of the win, “because we’re trying to win games, and they won a lot of games against us last year, so we want to beat them.

“We put in a lot of work, and we’re ready to (go to) the World Series.”

There’s that World Series stuff again.

Maybe he’s right.

If he is, maybe Monday is the start of that.

For now, it’s a 1-0 start in a division that clobbered the Reds last year (Reds 21-31 vs. rest of NL Central).

Maybe that’s why Bell had the meeting, even if he didn’t exactly, completely, quite fully acknowledge said meeting, never mind its tone or message.

“We do that from time to time. It was more just conversation,” he said.

Nothing about sending a message to the Brewers or the division?

“Well, you’re always trying to send —, “ Bell said before cutting himself off with a laugh. “It’s a great competition. Certainly nothing personal. It’s absolutely respect for all the teams we play, and definitely the Brewers at the top of that list.”

Especially the Brewers.

The rivals. The nemeses. The hated, chip-building, soul-crushing, hope-dashing, Reds-beating, dastardly Brew Crew.

“I think there’s value in kind of setting the tone in this first game of the series, the first time seeing them all year,” said the National League’s reigning Player of the Week, Spencer Steer.

To put the Brewers’ dominance of the Reds in terms of cost last year, if the Reds had gone even 5-8 against the Brewers instead of 3-10, that’s the difference in the Reds making the playoffs instead of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

You know, the Arizona Diamondbacks team that went to the World Series.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Elly De La Cruz makes history, calls World Series for Cincinnati Reds