PHOTO CREDIT: MIKE PENNEY/FLICKR
As the weather warms up and the last snowbanks melt away, it’s starting to feel like baseball season. The games on the field, however, will have to wait. The MLB season has been suspended indefinitely, leaving a gap in many fans’ daily lives that will be difficult to fill.
Recognizing that fans will have hours in the day to fill but no live sports to occupy them, baseball is one of many sports that has taken steps to highlight their online archives: MLB recently released this list of classic games from their vault that can be viewed for free online, including Juan Nieves’ 1987 no-hitter.
Recent history has also provided some exciting Brewers memories. The organization has won 191 regular and postseason games over the past two seasons, meaning fans could pick one to watch each day starting on March 26 and not run out until October 2. Here are some favorites from the early portion of the 2019 season to consider revisiting.
March 28
The Brewers opened their 50th season in Milwaukee with a win for the ages at Miller Park. After falling behind 3-0 early, they came back behind a three-run home run from Christian Yelich and held on with one of the more memorable defensive plays in franchise history: Lorenzo Cain’s game-saving home run robbery with two outs in the top of the ninth inning. The play propelled the Brewers to a 1-0 record and Cain to his first-ever Gold Glove Award.
March 31
Cain’s amazing catch might be the most memorable moment from the Brewers’ opening series in 2019, but it might not have come in the best game: Three days later the Brewers came from behind in even more dramatic fashion to clinch a series victory. Christian Yelich had homered in the first inning to tie an MLB record by going deep in the first four games of a season, but the Brewers still trailed 4-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh inning.
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They chipped away with two walks and RBI singles for Ryan Braun and Travis Shaw to cut the lead to 4-3, but they still needed more in the bottom of the ninth. Ben Gamel’s pinch hit double and Lorenzo Cain’s infield single set the stage for Yelich again, and his two-run double gave the Brewers their first of six walk-off victories in 2019.
April 3
In a season where offensive numbers exploded across baseball, one of the Brewers’ most notable 2019 wins came on a day where they managed just two hits. One of those hits drove in a run as the Brewers took a 1-0 lead in the second inning of a matinée against the Reds, and Freddy Peralta took it from there.
Peralta allowed just two hits, didn’t walk a batter and struck out 11 while working eight innings with just 100 pitches. Peralta completed eight innings for a Brewers team that allowed a starting pitcher to work into the eighth just six times all season and stands alone as the only Brewer to work eight scoreless frames since Jimmy Nelson did it in June of 2017.
May 4
The Brewers kept fans waiting a long time for their second walk-off win of the season but eventually sent them home happy. They took a 2-1 lead into the top of the ninth of a game against the Mets at Miller Park, but they couldn’t hold it, allowing a solo home run to Pete Alonso (his 10th of 53 on the season) that eventually forced extra innings.
After that, the two teams traded zeroes long into the night and had been on the field for over five hours when the Mets finally broke through with a single run in the top of the 18th. The Brewers responded in the bottom half, however, by drawing three consecutive walks and clinching victory on Ryan Braun’s two-run single on the 500th pitch of the game.
May 22
A few weeks later, the Brewers and Reds traded big innings at Miller Park. The Reds got theirs out of the way early, jumping out to a 5-0 lead in the top of the second inning but allowing the Brewers to chip away, eventually taking an 8-6 lead into the bottom of the sixth inning.
Five of the first six Brewers to bat in the bottom of the sixth reached base, with Yasmani Grandal (two-run homer), Hernan Perez and Orlando Arcia (RBI singles) each providing a run scoring hit as the Brewers erased the deficit. Josh Hader eventually closed the door on an 11-9 victory.
It remains to be seen when the 2020 MLB season will get underway, and when it does, the Brewers will have a tall task ahead of them if they’re going to match the excitement of the previous two years. While we wait, however, there’s plenty of exciting baseball to look back on.
