At about 8 o'clock Friday night, a few Tampa Bay pitchers came out of the visitors' clubhouse at Progressive Field to play catch. The tarp was on the infield. Cleveland's grounds crew had already pushed the water off it once and was working on the puddles along the warning track. The rain kept coming, the pitchers went back inside, and before long Game 4 of the American League Championship Series was called off.
That was all the baseball Friday had to offer. In its way it fit the week. October is supposed to be about the swing and the strikeout, but this one has mostly been about waiting.
Start with Milwaukee, which has done more waiting than anyone. On Thursday at Dodger Stadium, the Brewers came from four runs down to beat the Dodgers, 6-4, and finish a four-game sweep of the two-time defending champions. Jackson Chourio ran down Kiké Hernández's fly ball in left for the last out, and the Brewers had their first National League pennant. It is the franchise's first trip to the World Series since 1982, when Milwaukee was still in the American League and lost to the Cardinals in seven games.
Forty-four years is a long time to wait for a sentence. It was Dwayne Mosley who said "Milwaukee, you have a World Series!" on the radio in 1982, though people have spent the decades since crediting the late Bob Uecker. On Thursday another of Uecker's partners, Jeff Levering, got a new one: "The Brewers win the pennant!"
They won it in character. Shohei Ohtani hit a 428-foot, three-run homer off Dustin May in the second inning, his first home run of the postseason, and the Dodgers led 4-0. Milwaukee answered without power. Brice Turang walked, and William Contreras and Jake Bauers hit back-to-back ground-rule doubles. In the fifth, Sal Frelick walked and stole second, David Hamilton singled him home, and the Dodgers walked four men in the inning, the last of them forcing in the tying run.
In this space last week, Garrett Mitchell was catching a 406-foot drive at the wall in San Diego. On Thursday he led off the sixth against Tanner Scott, fell behind 0-2, took three straight balls, and hit the next pitch 409 feet to center. JoJo Romero pitched two scoreless innings and Aaron Ashby pitched three, striking out Ohtani with the tying run on third in the seventh. Hamilton, the No. 9 hitter, had hit four home runs all season. He hit one off Edwin Díaz in the ninth.
The Brewers tied for second-to-last in the majors in home runs this year. In the NLCS they out-homered the Dodgers 7-1 and outscored them 21-11. They are the first team to sweep a postseason opponent that swept them the year before, and according to the AP, the first to sweep a best-of-seven series while trailing at some point in every game. "We weren't coming in to play patty-cake," Pat Murphy said.
After Game 3, owner Mark Attanasio called Bud Selig, the club's 92-year-old founder, at 10:50 at night. Selig was too wound up to sleep, and he kept using the same word for this team: remarkable. Now the Brewers get a week off. Game 1 is Oct. 23, the first World Series game ever played at American Family Field.
Their opponent is still waiting out the weather. Cleveland leads the series 2-1. Thursday's Game 3 was moved up from 6 p.m. to 1 p.m. to beat the rain, and a weekday afternoon crowd watched Gavin Williams strike out nine Rays in five innings. He has 33 strikeouts in 16 2/3 postseason innings, and MLB.com says his 45.9 percent strikeout rate is the highest in postseason history for a pitcher with at least 10 innings. In the fifth, Petey Halpin turned on a 96 mph sinker from Griffin Jax and hit it into the right-field bleachers for a two-run homer. He backed out of the box all the way to the edge of the dirt to watch it, then sent his bat spinning into the air. Cade Smith got the last four outs. The Rays struck out 13 times and managed three hits.
"Look, we gotta hit," Kevin Cash said.
Nobody expected to hear that from the manager of a team that won 98 games, the most in the American League, and swept the Yankees without much trouble. But Cleveland, last in the majors in payroll at $74.2 million by MLB's figures, has won five of six games since trailing the White Sox two games to none in the Division Series.
Game 4 is tonight at 8 p.m. ET on TBS and truTV. Nick Martinez starts for Tampa Bay, and Shawn Armstrong opens a bullpen game for Cleveland. The forecast calls for temperatures near 40. Game 5 moves into what was supposed to be Sunday's off day, at 5 p.m. ET. If the Rays force it, Games 6 and 7 will be played Monday and Tuesday at Tropicana Field, which would make four games in four days. "This is baseball. This is Cleveland," Stephen Vogt said. "We're more than used to these kinds of days."
The Dodgers' winter came early. Ohtani, who went 5-for-26 across two rounds, told The Athletic he plans to pitch next season and that it is "hard to tell" whether he will need surgery on his knee or his biceps. Tarik Skubal, headed for free agency, wouldn't discuss his future. In Philadelphia, Don Mattingly signed a two-year deal to stay on as manager after going 79-55 as the interim, and the Phillies let hitting coach Kevin Long go. Houston won't renew Joe Espada's contract, and Seattle, looking for a manager, has interest in Espada and in Rocco Baldelli. And Dec. 1, when the labor agreement expires, is getting closer.
Milwaukee waited 44 years to hear its sentence again. Seven more days should be easy. Cleveland would settle for one dry night.