Milwaukee Brewers win first World Series title after 44 years

Milwaukee Brewers fans in Cobb County and across the nation can stop holding their breath. The team won its first World Series championship on Wednesday by defeating the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The victory ended a 44-year title drought for the franchise.

The win came in Game 5 of the best-of-seven series. The Brewers had taken a 3-2 lead in the 1982 World Series before losing the final two games. They have spent the last four decades without a pennant or a ring.

The current season followed a similar script to the 1982 campaign. Milwaukee held a 3-1 series lead entering Tuesday night. The team blew a one-run lead in the 12th inning to drop Game 4, 4-3. That loss put them on the brink of being swept in the series.

The Rays were the first team to come back from a 3-1 deficit in World Series history until the Brewers secured the win on Wednesday. The franchise had never recovered from such a hole in the modern era.

Thousands of Milwaukee supporters traveled to Florida for the series. They transformed Tropicana Field into a second home for the team. The crowd energy in the dome mirrored the intense tailgating scenes described in historical accounts of County Stadium.

A 1982 editorial cartoon by Jeff MacNelly for the Chicago Tribune captured the mood of the era. The drawing showed a smiling Cubs fan in a Hawaiian shirt surrounded by bundled-up Brewers fans. The caption read, “Hope springs eternal ..”

MacNelly, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, died in 2000. His work remains a touchstone for baseball fans. The cartoon depicted the Brewers as the underdog team with high hopes, a role they have played for decades.

The Brewers will return to Milwaukee as champions. They join the Cubs, who broke their own long drought in 2016, as teams that finally delivered a title to their fan bases after years of waiting.