Brewers and Rays Set for World Series

MILWAUKEE — Baseball will crown a first-time champion this fall. The Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays open the World Series on Friday night at American Family Field, the first meeting of two franchises without a title since Philadelphia beat Kansas City in 1980, and only the second such matchup since 1910.

Tampa Bay finished off Cleveland in six games Monday night to take the American League pennant. Milwaukee swept the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in four games in the National League series, with Jake Bauers named MVP, and will have had more than a week off by the time Game 1 begins at 8 p.m. Eastern.

It could also be the first World Series played entirely indoors. Tropicana Field has a fixed dome, and the retractable roof in Milwaukee is expected to stay shut with forecast temperatures in the upper 40s to low 50s. When every Series game was played in retractable-roof parks in 2020 and 2023, three games each year were played with the roof open. If the series goes seven games, the deciding game would be in Milwaukee on Halloween night.

Both clubs reached this point on modest budgets. As of Aug. 31, the Brewers ranked 19th in payroll and the Rays 25th, the first time since 1991 that both pennant winners sat in the bottom half of spending. The two teams also had the best records in their leagues, only the sixth such World Series matchup since the wild-card era began in 1995.

Milwaukee began as the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969 and moved in 1970, and its only earlier Series appearance came in 1982, when St. Louis won in seven games. Tampa Bay, which entered the majors in 1998, came up short in its two prior trips, falling to Philadelphia in 2008 and to Los Angeles in 2020. Brewers right-hander Jacob Misiorowski brings triple-digit velocity, each lineup is built around a 22-year-old star in Jackson Chourio and Junior Caminero, and Tampa Bay pitchers Freddy Peralta and Drew Rasmussen may face the team they used to play for. Colorado, San Diego and Seattle are the only other current franchises still waiting on a first title.

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