MILWAUKEE BREWERS

Haudricourt: Energy from fans spurs the Brewers to their first Game 7 since the World Series in 1982

Tom Haudricourt
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia (3) and left fielder Ryan Braun celebrate the Brewers win.

If anyone thought all was lost for the Milwaukee Brewers after they fell behind the Los Angeles Dodgers, three games to two, in the National League Championship Series, they forgot to tell the fans at Miller Park.

More importantly, they forgot to tell the Brewers, who assured the first Game 7 for the franchise since the 1982 World Series, and the first at home, period. 

It became obvious immediately Friday evening that citizens of Brewers Nation were not ready for this postseason party to end. Yes, their team was facing elimination and would need wins in both Games 6 and 7 to secure the Brewers’ first World Series appearance in 36 years, but who said that was impossible?

All you have to do is score some runs. The Brewers had trouble doing that in Los Angeles and lost the last two games there, allowing the Dodgers to creep within one victory of their second consecutive Fall Classic.

That issue quickly melted away in Game 6 as the Brewers broke loose for four runs in the first inning, getting the joint jumping. Drawing energy from a spirited audience of 43,619, the Brewers rolled to a 7-2 victory that evened the series and set the stage for Game 7 at Miller Park on Saturday night.

It’s quite simple now for the Brewers. Win and advance to their long-awaited second World Series against the Boston Red Sox. Lose and one hell of a ride comes to an end.

"Playing a Game 7 means the world," said Ryan Braun, the only player remaining from the 2011 team that was knocked out of the NLCS in six games by St. Louis. "

"It's exciting for me; it's exciting for everybody in our organization. It's exciting for our fans. I'm sure the energy and the enthusiasm in the ballpark tomorrow will be unlike anything any of us have experienced here."

One of the things that makes baseball great is how significantly momentum can change from day to day. Before taking the field in Game 6, the Brewers were facing elimination and wondering if the offense would perk up enough to avoid it.

Now, the Brewers are set up amazingly well to advance. Jhoulys Chacín, their best starter all year, is ready for Game 7 and fully rested, having shut out the Dodgers for 5 1/3 innings in Game 3.

Beyond that, by finally scoring some runs against the Dodgers' bullpen, manager Craig Counsell did not have to use relief ace Josh Hader and therefore will have him available for multiple innings if needed in the series finale. It's a position the Brewers could not have anticipated after losing the final two games in L.A.

"We just wanted to get through this game with a win," said reliever Jeremy Jeffress, who pitched a 1-2-3 seventh inning. "Anybody, any time, anywhere. It meant a lot to us to save Hader, definitely. And get this win today."

The night began with a very familiar face throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. Bud Selig, founder of the club and the man who got Miller Park built, tossed a one-hopper to Counsell, but style points didn’t matter as the crowd roared its approval.

No one in the community enjoyed more the Brewers’ surge into the NLCS than Selig, who still has a downtown office as commissioner emeritus of Major League Baseball. Selig admitted it was hard to root for the team while officially leading the sport but has been more open in his support in his emeritus position.

“What I’ll remember about the last day as the commissioner, or at least my last day at an owners meeting, more owners walked up to me and said, ‘Well, now you can root openly for the Brewers,’ ” Selig recalled.

“I will say this with great emotion. When I think of the 5½ years it took to get this club (after the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1965), battling against odds that I was too young to understand, almost insurmountable, and all the years that have happened, and now with Mark (Attanasio) running the club, and the guys are doing so well, it’s a great story.”

Brewers fans were not ready to give up on this postseason as they poured into the ballpark for the start of the game, abandoning tailgating early on a windy evening that made it a no-brainer to close the roof and outfield panels. They quickly demonstrated they’d be heard from when Public Enemy No. 1, Manny Machado, came to the plate in the first inning for the Dodgers.

You could step to a microphone in Wisconsin and publicly denounce cheese, brats, beer and Aaron Rodgers, and not hear boos at a level like this. This was epic, deep-throated booing, the kind that Rocky heard at the outset of his boxing match with Ivan Drago in the Soviet Union. Except worse.

Leave it to longtime Brewers killer David Freese to spill red wine on the white carpet, however. Leading off the game – a lineup spot he rarely occupies – Freese whacked a home run off Wade Miley, he of the Game 5 starting subterfuge, to temporarily silence the throng.

Shades of Game 6 of the 2011 NLCS against the Cardinals, when Freese blasted a three-run homer off helpless Shaun Marcum in the first inning to ignite a 12-6 romp that ended the Brewers' season. But this was just one run and the Brewers would have a big answer, unlike seven years earlier.

It started innocently enough with an infield single by Lorenzo Cain. But, before the Brewers were done, nine hitters would come to the plate, sending four runs across the plate. Jesús Aguilar, who had done virtually nothing since a Game 1 homer, doubled in two runs with two down, touching off the rally.

Mike Moustakas, batting a putrid .095 with no runs batted in, doubled in Aguilar. Erik Kratz followed with a run-scoring single, and suddenly it was batting practice against Dodgers pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu, much to the approval of the home crowd.

"I think especially after they jumped ahead on David Freese's homer, I thought it would be incredibly important for us to answer back as quickly as possible," said Braun, who drew a one-out walk in the first.

"Keep the crowd into it. Keep the pressure off of us. You just want to find a way to score one (run), whether it was in the first or second inning. To score four right there was very encouraging. It was inspiring for us the rest of the game."

By that point, the noise was deafening. And it made words from Counsell earlier in the day absolutely prophetic. In a pre-game media session, Counsell said his struggling offense, which had scored a mere three runs in 22 innings in the losses in Games 4 and 5 in Los Angeles, might get a boost from the home fans.

"Aggie's hit, you couldn't describe it as any bigger," Counsell said. "It lifted the roof off the place, and the first inning was loud from then on. 

"The rest of the game, whenever we got in a scoring situation, it got really loud. And I thought it helped us. It certainly put a crazy amount of energy in the dugout and it made it a lot of fun."

The home crowd was more than happy to oblige. Fans can’t do much more than sit on their hands when the offense is going down 1-2-3 every inning. But when a team gets off to an electric start as the Brewers did in the first inning, energy fills the ballpark, bouncing around and around under the closed roof in pulsating echoes.

Suffice it to say Brewers fans were not ready for this party to end. If their team was going to fall short of the World Series, they wanted to make the Dodgers work for it.

They wanted a Game 7. And they got one. 

"To have Game 7 in our house is probably the biggest advantage we're going to have," Jeffress said. 

"Tonight was just so loud. I thought they were going to open the roof. It was unbelievable. And I can only imagine what tomorrow is going to feel like."