For the entirety of the 2026 baseball season, the overlords of the game have stood on the single position that what has now happened could not happen, and the result was a year that has been treated like an appetizer for the main course of the offseason: the shutting down of the game until the players, after 40 years of resistance, finally agree to a salary cap.
uncertain
players → stand → cap
The insistence that the game had been predetermined undermined the Milwaukee Brewers, who spent 149 days this season atop the standings.
asserted
who → predetermine → standings
Baseball dismissed Milwaukee’s 22-0 demolition of Seattle on 18 August, the 20-0 waxing of Cincinnati a month later, and the comprehensive dusting of their division – their fourth consecutive National League Central title and fifth in six years – by 14 games.
asserted
Baseball → dismiss → games
Baseball’s owners, at their persuasive best, would have their paying customers believe that the Brewers’ franchise-record 103 regular-season wins also were an illusion, or worse, the dreaded outlier, even though Milwaukee have won 770 games since 2018, the fourth-most in all of baseball.
asserted
Milwaukee → have → baseball
Even when Milwaukee exhaled and made the Dodgers look old in a stirring four-game sweep, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported the owners’ position remained unchanged.
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position → exhale → sweep
The Brewers to that point had not helped dispel the notion.
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Brewers → help → notion
They had sputtered badly in recent postseasons, giving life to the thought that maybe their summer wins really were empty.
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wins → sputter → thought
Only one thing could ever change that perception: winning in the playoffs.
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thing → change → playoffs
Surrounded by so many friends that a Wednesday evening at Tropicana Field in St Petersburg felt like a home game – the good folks of Milwaukee and points beyond will remember the date specifically as 28 October 2026 – the Brewers rejected the notion they could not win both because of the economic forces against them and the intangibles champions possess but seemed to go missing from their group when the clocks fall back.
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clocks → surround → group
They did so by winning the World Series for the first time in their 58-year history, and doing so resoundingly, destroying the Tampa Bay Rays in five games.
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They → do → games
The final score was 4-1, ending a month that will be played and replayed in the minds and DVRs of Milwaukeeans.
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that → end → Milwaukeeans
Few moments have exposed the hypocrisy of baseball’s oligarchs.
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moments → expose → oligarchs
Few teams so emphatically demanded so much of themselves.
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teams → demand → themselves
What had been accepted as fact has always been decidedly fiction – but fiction can live as truth until it is exposed, killed once and for all on the ballfield.
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it → accept → ballfield
No matter the argument to concede the season to the inevitability of money and not having it, the truth is the Brewers have been an elite team for the better part of the decade, and the signature joy of this World Series run has been the joyous, ruthless attention this team paid to the task of not merely believing they were championship level, but proving it, to every team that opposed them this season, but more thrillingly, to themselves.
asserted
that → concede → themselves
Nothing else mattered but emerging from this month as champions – not the payroll or the labor battles that will almost certainly shut the game down over the coming weeks and quite likely wipe out spring training and at least a portion of the 2027 season and the Brewers’ title defense, or the mystique and riches of the two-time defending champion Dodgers; not the twin histories of having never won the whole thing since that long-ago day near the end of spring training in 1970 when the Seattle Pilots’ equipment truck loaded in Tempe, Arizona, but the team didn’t know where home would be as a court order determined if the truck was headed back to Seattle or to a new home in Milwaukee, or the Dodgers’ long record of torturing Milwaukee baseball.
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truck → matter → baseball
That torture dated back to losses to Brooklyn in 1956, Los Angeles in 1959 before the Braves left town for Atlanta, and to the recent postseason defeats to the Dodgers in 2018, 2020 and 2025, when the Brewers began their second decade in the National League by being as good as the franchise had been since the big American League years of Yount and Cooper, Molitor and Fingers, only to suffer the familiar NL fate of being good, but not good enough to beat the Dodgers when it counted.
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it → date → Dodgers
The Brewers were nowhere men – only the World Series would heal the past wounds that have stayed with them, highlighted by last year’s humiliating four-game sweep in the NLCS by the Dodgers – and they played with a buoyant and calm desperation, a gorgeous certainty that could not last, but did.
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that → heal → desperation
The Brewers won the requisite 11 games to claim the trophy and needed only 13 games to do it, but trailed in eight of them.
uncertain
Brewers → win → them
Yet, as an example of their belief, none of their series this postseason was tied after two games.
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none → tie → games
When they faltered, they did not panic as desperate teams too close to the prize do; they got tougher.
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they → falter → prize
Jake Bauers’ soul-snatching at-bats against the Dodgers offered a sign, the youthful charges of Series MVP catcher William Contreras, Jackson Chourio, and the too-young-to-care stardom of Cooper Pratt was another, coming back from down 4-0 against the Dodgers and Rays was still another, and the two-out, eight-run fifth in Game 3 seemed to end the Series – except that it didn’t.
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it → snatch → Series
Most impressively, responding to losing Game 4 three outs from the title in the bottom of the 12th not with the doubts that create suspense and pave the way to epic collapse, but by returning the next night unfazed and champagne-ready, demanding they be taken not as a cute story but a hard-edged team ready, at long last, for its close-up.
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they → respond → up
Neither the doomsday rhetoric of an unnecessary work stoppage or the fearsome reputation of the former champions, nor the feisty underdog spirit of an admirable Tampa Bay could block the sunlight, too long in arriving, of this Brewers team.
uncertain
rhetoric → block → team
They played pure, determined baseball and responded to the insult – and it is an insult – that the decimal points on the balance sheet meant more than winning 103 games and 90-plus so many times before that, meant that once it was time to deal the cards they couldn’t win.
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they → play → cards
The Brewers won 114 games in 2026, finished the regular season 15-3, and then went 11-2 in the playoffs for a grand total of 26-5 since 7 September.
asserted
Brewers → win → September
Baseball’s finances need addressing, but they don’t require shuttering the place.
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they → need → place
Even with the game the owners are playing in their quest to increase franchise values, their words speak an untruth – Brewers owner Mark Attanasio purchased the team from Bud Selig in 2005 for $223m and the team that supposedly cannot win (but did) has a valuation by Forbes at $1.9bn.
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that → play → 1.9bn
The game that matters, however, is the one on the field, the one that belongs to the players, and this October, there was absolutely nobody better.
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that → matter → players
Howard Bryant is the author of 11 books, including Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field, and Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America.
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Bryant → include → America
He also writes on Substack
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He → write → Substack
The Aporia
