Brewers Parade Day: Milwaukee Celebrates Its First World Series Title

Milwaukee gets its parade on Friday. The Brewers celebrate their first World Series championship with a parade through downtown Milwaukee, beginning on Wisconsin Avenue and winding to the lakefront, with an anticipated crowd of at least 400,000. Two days after the clincher in Tampa Bay, the smallest market in baseball gets its biggest day.

The numbers behind the celebration are still hard to believe. Milwaukee won 114 games including the playoffs and finished October 11-2. The Brewers swept the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series and beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in the World Series, closing it out 4-1 in Game 5 on Wednesday night.

The core that did it is young. Second-year ace Jacob Misiorowski started and won Games 1 and 5 of the World Series. Rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt drove in seven runs in the series. The Brewers did not buy this title. They built it, developed it and kept it together long enough for October to belong to them.

That is the blueprint conversation that will follow this parade all winter. Milwaukee just proved a team can win it all without the biggest payroll, and every small-market front office will point to this roster when ownership asks why it cannot be them. The counter is just as real: keeping a young core together costs money too, and the Brewers now have to pay the players who just made them champions.

The winter also brings a shadow the parade cannot chase away. A December 1 lockout looms over baseball, and the celebration in Milwaukee lands weeks before the sport's labor fight takes center stage. For one day, though, none of that matters. The Brewers are champions, and only four clubs in baseball have never won a title now: the Padres, the Mariners, the Rockies and the Rays.

Friday belongs to Milwaukee. The parade route, the lakefront and a crowd of 400,000 will make sure of that.