MILWAUKEE -- Of the 10 games the Milwaukee Brewers have played this October, they have trailed in eight. And of those eight postseason contests they have been behind, the Brewers have won seven. This sounds like it cannot be true. Regardless of their talent, their grit, their moxie, teams are not supposed to win every time they look like they're going to lose. Only the Brewers, with their delightful marriage of tangible and intangible, do. Seemingly every time. As if it's their destiny.
What else would this city want in its first World Series champion? A team that did things easy? Come on. Slog through 58 years awaiting glory and it might as well be glorious. And glorious it was Saturday, with the seventh comeback perhaps the best yet. The Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5-4 in Game 2 of the World Series and did so after spotting the Rays a four-run lead in the first inning.
There comes a point for every great baseball team when the strictures of the game no longer apply. That is where the Brewers find themselves today. They are two wins from the first World Series title in franchise history, sure, but this is more than that. The only entity that treats deficits with less concern than the Brewers is the United States government. And unlike Uncle Sam, the Brewers always erase theirs.
"It's the hard-wiring of each player on the team," said Milwaukee outfielder Sal Frelick, whose sixth-inning home run tied the score Saturday and set up the Brewers to go ahead on rookie Cooper Pratt's seventh-inning RBI single. "If we were up 10 runs, we'd still be playing the same."
They did it against the San Diego Padres, coming back in a pair of wins, including the National League Division Series clincher. They did it against the Los Angeles Dodgers, trailing in all four games only to sweep L.A. out of the NL Championship Series. And they've done it against Tampa Bay now, twice in two days, the latest reminder of how the Brewers' ethos has helped them turn into a runaway train of winning.
Should this continue when the Series moves to Tropicana Field for Monday's Game 3, Milwaukee will find itself alongside the 2018 Boston Red Sox among the most dominant champions this century. Those Red Sox were behind 4-0 in Game 2, as well, before ambushing the Dodgers en route to an 11-2 postseason.
Currently, the Brewers are 9-1 this postseason. And that breeds something that goes beyond belief and permeates Milwaukee's dugout every time it's on the wrong side of the scoreboard.
"The boys don't quit," Brewers first baseman Andrew Vaughn said.
"That's us," infielder Joey Ortiz said.
"It doesn't matter the situation of the game," Vaughn said. "We're winning."
"Honestly," Ortiz said, "I feel like any time we go down, it's a lock. We're coming back."
Saturday's win mirrored the Brewers pennant-clinching victory against L.A. when they fell behind 4-0. Panic didn't set in. Fear didn't afflict them. Someone would be the standout. They didn't know who. They never do. And it doesn't matter, either, because on a team with few stars, a team with limited payroll, a team that until this October didn't have much resonance outside the state of Wisconsin despite winning a major-league-best 103 games, everyone must contribute.
That it happened to be Frelick on Saturday delighted the Brewers. A solid contributor over his first three seasons, Frelick regressed this year, hindered by structural damage in his right shoulder. He had not homered since the All-Star break. He was batting eighth. The Rays brought in a left-hander, Ian Seymour, to start the sixth against him, happy about the matchup.
Then Frelick poked one to center field. It kept carrying. He got every bit of his 5-foot-9 frame into it. And when the ball breached the fence, the 43,245 at American Family Field lost control. The 4-0 deficit had been halved in the first inning, cut to one in the fourth and erased entirely by Frelick.
"I almost started crying in the dugout," Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers said. "That's such an awesome moment for Sal. Such an awesome moment for the team. It means so much to us in here."
The moments, as have transpired all October, kept coming. Pratt, whose throwing error on the first play of Game 2 led to the deluge of runs by the Rays, served a single to right field to score Brice Turang, who had led off the bottom of the seventh with a double. By then, the Brewers were into their bullpen, which fired another six scoreless innings, as impermeable as micro-ridged silicon. And when Aaron Ashby finished his 15th scoreless inning this postseason and the Rays ended their eighth consecutive frame with a zero on the scoreboard, the noise reflected the accomplishment.
"It's the loudest I've ever heard this place," Vaughn said.
With good reason. The way the Brewers are playing, the next time they'll be in Milwaukee is for a parade. Counting out the Rays entirely would be a fool's errand, but they spent the first two games of the Series making the sorts of mistakes that the Brewers haven't, and in matchup of two teams whose brands of baseball revolve around limiting errors and imposing their will on others, the Brewers are the only ones abiding.
Off they go to St. Petersburg, Florida, where Tropicana Field is going to be loud and hostile and everything the Brewers revel in. The Brewers weathered the madness of Petco Park and the ghosts of Dodger Stadium with aplomb, operating as if they owned the places. And by the end of both series, they did.
This is who the Milwaukee Brewers are. If you punch them in the face, they relish the taste of the blood. If you kick them in the shin, they limp around the bases. If you give them an inch, they'll take the universe. It's the characteristic of a worthy champion, and through two games of the World Series, that looks precisely like what they're bound to be.