Two-run homers send Tampa Bay Rays into World Series against Milwaukee Brewers
CLUB TROPICANA: The Tampa Bay Rays celebrate their AL Championship win over Cleveland, booking a World Series date with Milwaukee, starting with Game 1 Friday. Pic: Julio Aguilar/Getty Images
THE Tampa Bay Rays are headed back to baseball's World Series, 18 years to the day since they captured the first American League pennant in franchise history.
Junior Caminero and Yandy Diaz each belted a two-run homer, helping Tampa Bay advance to the World Series for the third time in franchise history with a 7-3 victory over the Cleveland Guardians on Monday.
The Rays recorded their third straight win to capture the American League Championship Series in six games.
Tampa Bay will visit the Milwaukee Brewers for Game 1 of the World Series on Friday that will produce a first-time champion and likely baseball’s first all-indoor championship. The Brewers won two of the three games against the visiting Rays in the regular season in a series played March 30-April 1.
Tampa Bay was unsuccessful in its previous two trips to the Fall Classic. The Rays fell in five games to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008 and in six games to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020.
Caminero celebrated his first career postseason homer by emphatically slapping his chest before rounding first base and posing with his arms folded at home plate. The latter gesture was a nod to former Tampa Bay slugger Randy Arozarena, who was in the crowd on Monday at Tropicana Field.
"Tampa, this is for you," Caminero screamed during his postgame interview with TNT Sports, doing his best LeBron James imitation after the latter helped the Cleveland Cavaliers win the 2016 NBA Finals.
Diaz, who guaranteed after Game 5 that "we're going to win tomorrow," provided the exclamation point in the eighth inning on Monday with a homer over the left field wall.
"A lot of people didn't believe me, but here are the results," Diaz said of predicting the Game 6 victory.
Diaz was signed by Cleveland in 2013 out of Cuba and traded to Tampa Bay in 2018. Caminero was signed by Cleveland in 2019 out of the Dominican Republic and traded to Tampa Bay in 2021.
The best-of-seven World Series showdown between low-payroll pennant winners opens Friday night in Milwaukee. It’ll be the first World Series between title-less teams since the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Kansas City Royals in 1980 and just the second since 1910.
One city is known for the television sitcom “ Laverne & Shirley,” the home of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, cheeseheads and breweries that have included Miller, Pabst and Schlitz.
The other is a vacation destination featuring warm weather, beaches and art museums.
“They’re highly athletic but so are we. I’m excited to see two great teams that play the game a little differently than maybe it’s been played the last decade or so,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said after his team defeated Cleveland in six games for the AL pennant.
“We’re going to use our speed. We’re going to bunt when it’s called for. We’ll try to get matchups and I can assure you they’re going to do the same.”
Just five of the current 30 teams have never won a title, with Colorado, San Diego and Seattle also ringless.
“The city is ready. I know that the fans are ready, and I know that we’ll be ready,” said Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers, MVP of the four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series.
Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski heads the pitchers with his 100 mph-plus heat, and each team features a dynamic 22-year-old anchoring the lineup: Jackson Chourio of the Brewers and Junior Caminero of the Rays. Tampa Bay’s Freddy Peralta and Drew Rasmussen could pitch against their former team.
“I don’t know how the people, the fans are going to take it, but I’m happy to be go there,” said Peralta, the ALCS MVP. “I have a lot of people that I love over there, people that care about me and I’m happy to be there and be able to compete together and take a lot of pictures and videos.”
The Brewers started as the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969, then were bought by Bud Selig’s group in bankruptcy court and moved to Milwaukee for the 1970 season. The team’s only Series trip was a seven-game loss to St. Louis in the 1982 Suds Series, back when the Brewers were in the American League.
Tampa Bay launched as the expansion Devil Rays in 1998 and dropped the “Devil” ahead of the 2008 season. The team’s two Series appearances ended with losses to Philadelphia in 2008 and the Dodgers in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
This will be only the sixth time since the start of the wild-card era in 1995 that teams with the top records in each league meet in the World Series after Atlanta-Cleveland (1995), New York Yankees-Braves (1999), Boston-St. Louis (2013), Dodgers-Rays (2020) and Dodgers-Yankees (2024).
Milwaukee had MLB’s 19th-highest payroll as of Aug. 31. Tampa Bay was 25th. Not since 1991 had both pennant winners been among the bottom 50% in player spending. Minnesota was 15th among 26 teams when it beat Atlanta (19th) in seven games.
Tampa Bay’s ballpark has a fixed roof and Milwaukee’s is retractable — it probably will be closed with game-time temperatures predicted to be in the upper 40s or low 50s.
When all World Series games were played at retractable-roof ballparks in 2020 (Texas) and 2023 (Texas and Arizona), there were three open-air games each year.
The 1982 Brewers were known as Harvey’s Wallbangers, a nickname given by first baseman Cecil Cooper. The Brewers led the major leagues in home runs under manager Harvey Kuenn and had a roster with five future Hall of Famers: Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Rollie Fingers, Ted Simmons and Don Sutton.
Various players over the years have claimed The Pfister Hotel, where many teams stay in Milwaukee, is haunted. Opened in 1893, the hotel has Romanesque Revival architecture, and players have claimed to hear spooky noises and footsteps.
If there is a Game 7, it would be played in Milwaukee on Halloween night.
Milwaukee’s Pat Murphy, winner of the last two NL Manager of the Year awards, has two tattoos referencing Bruce Springsteen: “No Retreat No Surrender” on his left forearm and “The Boss” on his back.
He first went to a Springsteen concert in 1980 when he was in college, then another when he was coaching at Notre Dame.
“He grew up a Catholic kid in New Jersey. I was a Catholic kid from upstate New York,” the 67-year-old Murphy said. “There’s just so much that resonates with me how he speaks about things.”
The 1982 Series was played at Milwaukee County Stadium, home of the Braves from 1953-65 before they moved to Atlanta, and then the Brewers from 1970-2000. This year’s championship will be played at American Family Field. Known as Miller Park from 2001-20, the ballpark is adjacent to the County Stadium site. It was host of the 2002 All-Star Game, which ended in a 7-7, 11-inning tie after both teams ran out of pitchers.
Milwaukee’s ballpark is known for its Racing Sausages in the middle of the sixth inning, with the Brat, Polish, Italian, Hot Dog and Chorizo competing. It also has the Uecker Seat in the last row of section 422 in the left-field upper deck — it includes a bronze statue of Bob Uecker, the beloved funny man who broadcast Brewers games for 54 seasons until his death last year.
Tampa Bay’s home, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, is on its third name. Known as the Florida Suncoast Dome from 1990-93 and the ThunderDome from 1993-96, the stadium got its current name about 18 months before the Rays’ first game in 1998. The Trop reopened this season after repairs to damage caused by Hurricane Milton. The Rays plan to move to a new stadium across the bay in Tampa in 2029.
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