One Letter, Forty-Four Years: How the Milwaukee Brewers Finally Solved Themselves

[THE TITLE] First in 44 years.

• On Wednesday, the Milwaukee Brewers won their first World Series, beating Tampa Bay four games to one.
• It's the city's first baseball title since 1957.

[THE NAME] Swap an S for an M.

• The Brewers started out as the Seattle Pilots.
• In 1970, Bud Selig, who later became baseball's commissioner, bought the broke team and moved it to Milwaukee.
• As he tells it, renaming the team was easy.
• Just swap Seattle's S for Milwaukee's M.

[THE SEASON] A record 103 wins.

• This year, the Brewers won a franchise-record 103 games.
• In the playoffs, they swept the Dodgers, the team that had swept them a year earlier.

[THE SCARE] The Rays hang on.

• The Rays stayed alive with a walk-off win in the 12th inning of Game 4.

[THE MVP] Contreras closes it.

• Then Milwaukee closed it out, four to one, behind its catcher and series MVP, William Contreras.

[THE METHOD] Smallest market, best team.

• Milwaukee is baseball's smallest market, and it kept trading away its stars.
• It won by developing new ones faster than they left.

[THE PARADE] Forty-four years later.

• On Friday, Milwaukee held its victory parade, 44 years after losing the 1982 World Series.