milwaukee

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee is going absolutely nuts. The Brewers have sold out Game 3 and Game 4 of the World Series.

The Tampa Bay Rays will host those games, but the Brewers invited fans to come to their stadium and watch on the big screen. The Brewers sold more than 31,000 tickets to each of their watch parties at $15 apiece. On Friday morning, StubHub offered them for resale, starting at $168.

There is nothing quite like a city uniting behind a team that never has won a World Series. Ask Logan Henderson.

Henderson, the Brewers’ starting pitcher Saturday in Milwaukee, grew up a huge fan of the Houston Astros. He was 15 when he saw his first World Series game.

“My parents had always said, if we were fortunate enough to be able to watch them go to the World Series, we’re going to do everything we can to get there,” Henderson said. “I was blessed that my parents got tickets to go to the games.

“There’s nothing like it. I’m on the other side of it now. I was a spectator and a fan, now I’m a player. It’s definitely surreal.”

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Logan Henderson follows through on a pitch during Game 2 of the NLCS against the Dodgers in Milwaukee on Oct. 12.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

His first World Series game as a spectator and fan? Game 4 of the 2017 World Series.

“I went to the one before the crazy one,” he said. “L.A. ended up winning that game.”

In the crazy one, the Dodgers blew two four-run leads, tied the score with three runs in the ninth inning and lost in the 10th.

If we knew then what we know now, Game 4 would be the crazy one: Dodgers pitcher Alex Wood constantly changing his signs, suspicious that the Astros might be up to something, whatever that might be.

Dodgers pitcher Alex Wood delivers from the mound during Game 4 of the World Series against the Astros on Oct. 28, 2017, in Houston.

(Pool / Getty Images)

Wood was vindicated three years later, when a league investigation revealed the Astros had been cheating in 2017, stealing signs from a television monitor next to the dugout and relaying them to batters by banging on trash cans. The practice, according to the report issued by commissioner Rob Manfred, was refined during the regular season and extended “throughout the postseason.”

The scandal outraged the Dodgers and their fans. The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to demand Manfred award the 2017 championship to the Dodgers. Their players wanted nothing to do with that. A real championship, after all, would come with champagne and beer in the clubhouse and a parade through the streets.

Still, the players did not turn the other cheek.

“Everyone knows they stole the ring from us,” Cody Bellinger said.

“They cheated,” Kike’ Hernández said. “They got away with it. They got a ring out of it.”

When the Astros’ team buses arrived at Dodger Stadium for games during the pandemic season of 2020, when ballparks were closed to the public, Dodgers fans gathered outside to boo.

Dodgers fans boo Jose Altuve of the Astros after he struck out in a game on Aug. 3, 2001, at Dodger Stadium.

(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)

Those were Henderson’s guys inside those buses: Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, George Springer, Lance McCullers Jr. Those were the guys that brought home the Astros’ first World Series championship, as Henderson’s Brewers are trying to do for Milwaukee.

“Personally, as a fan, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston really hard, and the Astros brought a championship to the city,” Henderson said.

“That meant absolutely everything to the city. I hope that means what it did for me to the fans in Milwaukee here.”

The Rays also are trying to bring their first championship home to Tampa Bay. In 2017, hard as this might be to believe today, the mighty Dodgers had not won a championship in 29 years.

And now, as a major leaguer, Henderson has an acute appreciation of the little things that can mean the difference between victory and defeat, between a parade and another plaintive chorus of “wait ‘til next year.”

It could be a pitcher that blows a throw he could make in his sleep, sending his team home for the winter. It could be a defense perfectly executing a seldom-seen play. It could be a ball that clanks off the roof and into play instead of flying into the stands for a home run.

It could be stealing signs and banging on trash cans.

“I would rather face a player that was taking steroids than face a player that knew every pitch that was coming,” Wood tweeted after Manfred’s report on the Astros’ cheating.

Henderson knows how hard this is to do. The Brewers haven’t appeared in the World Series in 44 years, and owner Mark Attanasio said nervous fans already are wondering whether their next appearance will be 44 years away.

So I asked Henderson if, all these years later, the scandal changed how he felt about those Astros.

He paused.

He exhaled.

He paused again.

“Maybe a little bit,” Henderson said. “It’s unfortunate. I try not to think about it or talk on it too much. I think now, being in the game, my perspective on it is a little different.

“I think for the kid in me — and the huge baseball fan I was — that team will always have a special place in my heart.”

MILWAUKEE — The Dodgers spent $163 million on the back end of their bullpen the past two years. The Milwaukee Brewers did not.

So two games into the National League Championship Series, guess which team’s relief corps has been lights out and which one has been lit up? (Spoiler alert: it’s not the team with all the money.)

Milwaukee sent a parade of four relievers to the mound for a second straight game Monday, and for a second straight game they didn’t give up a run, retiring the last 15 Dodgers in order in a 7-4 win that gives Milwaukee a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, which moves to Dodger Stadium for Game 3 on Wednesday.

The Brewers’ bullpen has pitched 9 2/3 innings in the series, yielding just two hits — both off Abner Uribe — and three walks. That’s it. Both wins have gone to relievers, DL Hall in the opener and JoJo Romero in Game 2.

Dodger relievers, meanwhile, have pitched 9 1/3 innings in the two games, giving up four runs on nine hits. Reliever Brock Stewart took the loss Monday.

In a series that’s rapidly shaping up as a battle of the bullpens, the Dodgers clearly aren’t getting what they paid for.

“I don’t have an answer,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shrugged when asked why the Dodgers relievers have struggled while the Brewers have shined. “I know that they’ve got good arms; so do we. I think they’re just finding ways to win pitches better than we are.”

Slugger Max Muncy has a theory on the same question.

“They’re really good,” he said.

The Brewers’ 48 bullpen wins was the most in baseball during the regular season and its 3.40 ERA was best in the National League. And it has been even better in the postseason, giving up just one earned run in 28 2/3 innings against the Dodgers and San Diego Padres. In the divisional era (since 1969), only the 1991 Minnesota Twins have a lower bullpen ERA through six playoff games and with a reliever earning the victory in all five of Milwaukee’s postseason wins, the Brewers have done something only the 2014 Kansas City Royals had done previously.

“There’s a reason they’re where they’re at right now and the bullpen’s a big piece of that,” Muncy said. “If there is a positive, you can say that a lot of our guys are starting to get looks at their back-end guys. But when they’re as good as they are, I don’t know how much that helps.

“They’re all throwing 100 [mph] plus and they all have really nasty stuff.”

Especially Aaron Ashby, who has pitched in both games, holding the Dodgers to a walk in 3 2/3 innings, striking out three. He’s the Brewers’ best-paid reliever, earning $5.5 million this season.

The Dodgers have three relievers making at least twice that — and one of them, Blake Treinen, didn’t even make the postseason roster. One of the others, Tanner Scott, gave up twice as many runs in his first postseason appearance as the Brewers’ bullpen has given up this month.

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Abner Uribe celebrates after completing the seventh inning of Game 2 of the NLCS.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“They attack the hitters,” Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández said of Milwaukee’s relievers. “They throw strikes. They got good stuff. They throw hard. We’ve just got to do a better job.”

Hernández then echoed Muncy in pointing out the Dodgers have now seen six of Milwaukee’s nine relievers, with Ashby and Uribe throwing in both games. And while the Dodgers haven’t done anything against them yet, that familiarity could help going forward.

“We know what we’re going to get,” Hernández said.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy conceded the point — sort of.

“Familiarity, as the numbers tell us, does provide an edge,” he said. “So what we try to do is make sure they don’t face the same guys the next time they pitch if they’re one-inning guys.

“Can’t always do that.”

Sometimes you can, though. Uribe, who has appeared in all six Brewers games this postseason, has already faced eight Dodger hitters in the series, but only one of them, Andy Pages, twice. And when he does face someone a second time, Murphy said with a smile, who’s to say he’ll him pitch the same way?

“Uribe might have something up his sleeve based on how those other times went,” he said. “Like, well, I never gave him this.’”

That would count as a surprise. However the dominant performance of the Brewers’ bargain-basement bullpen would not. Because even in baseball, the Dodgers are finding out, there are some things money can’t buy.

If the Brewers are going to take down the heavily favored Dodgers, their group of Southland products will be key in the National League Championship Series that begins Sunday in Milwaukee.

Former Westlake star Christian Yelich is Mr. Brewer. He’s a three-time All-Star and the National League MVP in 2018. He’s always been willing to come back to the community and make contributions.

First baseman Jake Bauers is a Marina High graduate who lost in the Southern Section Division 1 championship game at Dodger Stadium to Jack Flaherty and Harvard-Westlake 1-0. Here’s a look at Bauers this season.

Former Marina first baseman Jake Bauers has 21 home runs for the Milwaukee Brewers.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Here’s a story from 2013 when Bauers was showing off his hitting prowess.

Closer Trevor Megill also played at Marina. Pitcher JoJo Romero went to Oxnard High.

Second baseman Brice Turang was a star at Corona Santiago. In 2015, he started his freshman season eight for 12 at the plate.

Center fielder Garrett Mitchell, who went to Orange Lutheran and UCLA, has overcome Type 1 diabetes while needing an insulin pump. Here’s a story from 2019 when he was playing for UCLA.

Infielder Joey Ortiz was a standout at Garden Grove Pacifica.

It all makes for an interesting homecoming when the Brewers come to Dodger Stadium next week.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

A growing scrum of reporters around Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, in the locker room Wednesday night after the Dodgers defeated the Atlanta Braves to advance to the National League Championship Series, didn’t put a damper on the celebration.

Tanner Scott stuck upside-down beers in Friedman’s shirt. Alex Freeland dumped beer into his mouth and all over his face. Eric Lauer coordinated a sneak attack, announcing that he was heading to the showers before reappearing from a side entrance.

Friedman never stopped grinning. But it almost looked like he had an extra glint in his eye when asked whether he’d rather take on the Milwaukee Brewers or San Diego Padres in the NLCS.

“I just want chaos,” Friedman said.

Later that night, the Brewers advanced, locking in an NLCS rematch that could certainly deliver chaos.

The Dodgers and Brewers are meeting in the playoffs for the fourth time in nine years. Last season, the Dodgers swept Milwaukee in the NLCS.

Usually before playing a big-market team like the Dodgers, Brewers manager Pat Murphy leans into the underdog narrative by saying he suspects the opponent can’t name many of the Brewers players. But by becoming perennial playoff contenders, and posting the best record in the majors over the past two seasons, the Brewers have given up whatever anonymity they may have had when they promoted Murphy a few years ago.

The cast of characters on both sides has remained relatively consistent since last October. But even after trading away top pitcher Freddy Peralta, Milwaukee is a more complete team than last season.

But losing talented players hasn’t stopped the Brewers from winning the last four NL Central titles. They keep saying goodbye to top players — including Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes, closer Devin Williams and shortstop Willy Adames — then raise their win total.

Many of the players remain the same, although the Brewers added former Dodgers starting pitcher Dustin May and reliever JoJo Romero in a trade with the St. Louis Cardinals at the deadline, after losing in the Tarik Skubal sweepstakes. Several players also took important steps forward.

The biggest difference-maker has been Jacob Misiorowski, who had the lowest ERA (1.80) in the majors this season and is the NL Cy Young favorite. As a rookie last year, the flame-thrower was relegated to the postseason bullpen until the NLCS. This year, he was the Brewers’ Game 1 starter in the NLDS against the Padres.

The Brewers have long hung their hat on playing sound baseball, from pitching and defense to baserunning. But the knock on them has been the lack of thump in their lineup.

First baseman Jake Bauers had a career season, leading the team in home runs (26), on-base percentage (.389) and on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.873). Jackson Chourio, who was hobbled by a hamstring injury in the last NLCS, hit a career-high 25 home runs and led the team in slugging percentage (.487). And though the Brewers likely won’t out-slug the Dodgers — they hit 50 fewer home runs during the season — they have a pesky roster that stole 90 more bases.

The Brewers also had a better regular-season record (103-59) than the Dodgers (100-62), so the series will begin in Milwaukee on Sunday.

Signs point to a more competitive series than last year. The Brewers even entered the postseason with the better World Series odds (18.5%) than the Dodgers (16.7%), according to Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA standings.

The Dodgers certainly won’t take the matchup lightly. They made sure not to underestimate the No. 3 seed Braves.

“The mistake that the outside perspective kind of gets sometimes is to underestimate certain teams,” said Kiké Hernández as the Dodgers celebrated their NLDS victory. “And we knew we had a tough task ahead of us. [The Braves are] a team that was playing really good baseball, had a lot of momentum, and they were throwing the ball really well. They had a really good bullpen, a lot of different kinds of arms, and, fortunately for us, they were a little bit short on starting pitching, so they had to tax their bullpen to a point where it paid off for us.”

The Dodgers ended the series before it returned to Los Angeles for an if-necessary Game 5. So they got to turn their attention to the Brewers a couple days early.

“I think the strength of our team is our rotation,” Friedman said. “And so even if we weren’t able to reset it, we still feel like it would be a strength of ours. But to be able to line it up the way we want to, certainly advantageous. To be able to have a few days off our feet and rest up for Sunday, also really helpful.”

Then the chaos begins.

Murphy is a baseball lifer who paid more dues than a union plumber before finally pulling on a big-league uniform for the first time when he was 56. Murphy pitched in the low minors for two organizations and for two independent teams before retiring to become a college coach at Maryville, Claremont-Mudd, Notre Dame and Arizona State. He also managed the Dutch national team to a European championship and a spot in the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

His big break came in 2015, when the Padres promoted him from their triple A team in El Paso to take over for Bud Black as interim manager. A year later Craig Counsell hired him as bench coach for the Brewers, and when Counsell took the Cubs’ managerial job ahead of the 2024 season, Murphy, now 67, was named his replacement.

Two-hundred and 93 regular-season wins and three playoff trips later, the baseball lifer is four wins away from the World Series, which would be the trip of a lifetime.

“I think it was just the relentless pursuit of something,” Murphy told Yahoo Sports of his long journey. “I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to be special.”