Pat Murphy leads Brewers to first World Series title with Game 5 win over Rays
Milwaukee beat Tampa Bay 4-1 on October 28, completing a 12-2 postseason run and giving its 67-year-old manager a championship after a long route through college and professional baseball.
Pat Murphy led the Milwaukee Brewers to their first World Series title on Wednesday, October 28, as they beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, according to the Associated Press. The win ended Milwaukee’s 57-season wait for a championship and gave its 67-year-old manager his first title in the role.
The clincher followed Tampa Bay’s 12-inning Game 4 win, which had kept the series alive with Milwaukee ahead 3-1. In Game 5, Jacob Misiorowski threw 5⅔ scoreless innings, NBC News reported. The Brewers scored through two singles, a sacrifice fly and a double.
How Milwaukee completed its championship run
Milwaukee finished the postseason 12-2, a .857 winning percentage that NBC compared with the 11-1 title runs of the 1999 New York Yankees and 2005 Chicago White Sox. The Brewers trailed in nine of their 12 postseason games and won seven of those nine. Their payroll ranked 19th among Major League Baseball’s 30 teams, according to NBC.
The team’s scoring changed across the final two rounds. Milwaukee hit seven home runs while sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, NBC reported. It then took a 3-0 lead over Tampa Bay despite hitting only one homer in those World Series games. The Rays’ Game 4 victory delayed the title by a day before Milwaukee closed the series in five games.
Pat Murphy’s route to the Brewers’ dugout
Murphy coached at Notre Dame from 1988 to 1994 and Arizona State from 1995 to 2009 before moving into professional baseball, the AP reported. He managed in the minor leagues, then became the San Diego Padres’ interim manager in June 2015, compiling a 42-54 record. Milwaukee hired him as bench coach that October.
He remained the Brewers’ bench coach through 2023, apart from much of the shortened 2020 season. On August 1 that year, Murphy suffered a heart attack during a workout at Milwaukee’s American Family Field and was taken from the ballpark. Recalling the ambulance ride to the AP, he said the driver asked for his next of kin.
Murphy became Milwaukee’s manager in November 2023 after Craig Counsell, who had played for him at Notre Dame, left to manage the Chicago Cubs. Reflecting on working in team sports, Murphy told the AP: ‘You get up every day with the opportunity to impact, the opportunity to learn from somebody, to have somebody impact you.’ His long tenure with the Brewers culminated in Wednesday’s title.
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Sources and context
- Charming, cantankerous Pat Murphy at age 67 leads Brewers to first World Series titleAssociated Press, republished by Yahoo Sports
- Milwaukee Brewers defeat Tampa Bay Rays to claim first World Series titleNBC News
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.