Is it spring training yet? No — the pennants are being decided, and spring must wait its turn.

THE MORNING HORSEHIDE HERALD

"Every Score Set Down, No Deed Unsung"

~ Being a Faithful Daily Chronicle of the National Pastime ~

Volume I · No. 109 · Sunday, the Twenty-Fifth of October, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Reporting 1 contest from the day prior.

The Game of the Day

THE BOY OF TWO-AND-TWENTY WHO LET THE RAYS IN SHOWS THEM OUT — BREWERS 5, RAYS 4, A FOUR-RUN DEBT PAID IN FULL, AND MILWAUKEE REMOVES SOUTH TWO GAMES TO THE GOOD

Pratt's Bounced Throw Hands Tampa Bay Four Runs Before a Brewer Bats; Milwaukee Files at the Lead All Evening, Frelick Finds Dead Center on the Ninth Pitch of a Battle, and the Rookie's Seventh-Inning Single Buys the Game Back Before 43,245 — Robin Yount Among Them

Baseball's bookkeeping permits a man to repay by nightfall the debt he contracts at dusk, and Cooper Pratt, 22 years old and playing his first World's Series, settled his in full. His bounced throw on Yandy Díaz's leadoff grounder opened the gate, and before Logan Henderson could shut it the Rays had built a 4-0 lead — Chandler Simpson and Junior Caminero cashing singles, then Liam Hicks lifting a two-run drive over the wall in right-center, the first home run this World's Series has seen — four runs in five batters against a starter who had never in his major-league life allowed more than three earned in a game.4 And waiting behind that lead stood Drew Rasmussen, the Tampa Bay ace, with the Series apparently about to be evened.

Milwaukee's answer was the one it has given all October: not the haymaker but the file. In the home first Jonathan Aranda let a catchable foul pop fall untouched beside the screen, and William Contreras, reprieved, lined a single past the second baseman to score Jackson Chourio; Garrett Mitchell's knock brought Jake Bauers across before the inning closed, and the four-run mountain was already half quarried.4 In the fourth Aranda let David Hamilton's grounder through his legs — Pratt, of all men, scoring the run — and Rasmussen, handed the kind of cushion that wins championships, could not keep it: six hits and three runs in 3 2/3 innings, gone before the midpoint with the lead cut to 4-3.

The tying blow came from the least likely bat on the premises. Sal Frelick, owner of four home runs all season and a .614 on-base-plus-slugging, opened the sixth against the left-hander Ian Seymour and simply refused to be put away, fouling off fastball after fastball until the ninth pitch of the argument caught too much plate — and he drove it over the barrier in dead center, his first home run since July 11 and only the fourth of his career against left-handed pitching.7 An inning later Brice Turang doubled, Pratt lined a single to right to fetch him home, and the evening's accounts were squared: the error's author had supplied the deciding run of a 5-4 game. Abner Uribe took the victory, and Aaron Ashby closed it with a five-out save, the last of them a full-count check swing from Díaz that the first-base umpire called, and the batter later conceded.6

So Milwaukee boards for St. Petersburg two games to none to the good, two wins from the first championship in franchise history, and the arithmetic now leans heavily: clubs up two games to none in a best-of-seven have taken the series 80 times in 96, and no club has climbed out of that hole in a World's Series in 30 years, since the 1996 Yankees.3 In the stands sat the 71-year-old who played shortstop the last time this franchise got this far. "Hey, I waited 44 years for this!" said Robin Yount, who has adopted the rookie Pratt as a favorite. "I am not missing a game."3 The third game goes Monday at eight o'clock Eastern under the Tropicana roof, Freddy Peralta against Robert Gasser.8

News Around the League

THE FUNDAMENTALS DESK: THE CLUB OF EIGHT-AND-NINETY WINS BUILT ON THE LITTLE THINGS KEEPS GETTING THE LITTLE THINGS WRONG — A FOUL POP DROPPED, A GROUNDER THROUGH THE LEGS, A RUNNER WAVED INTO AN OUT AT HOME, AND CAMINERO ON HIS FEET IN THE DUGOUT DEMANDING OUTS

The Rays spent six months proving that tidiness wins ballgames, and two October evenings discovering the price of its absence. Saturday's inventory of the uncharacteristic ran long: Aranda's dropped foul pop that re-opened the first inning, and his fourth-inning error that he judged himself without appeal — "I didn't read the spin off the bat well... It was a play that I could have made"; Simpson, in the sixth, unable to secure Christian Yelich's single cleanly; and in the same inning the third-base coach Brady Williams waving Hicks around on Victor Mesa Jr.'s two-out single, whereupon Chourio gathered the ball in shallow left and threw him out at the plate by a comfortable margin on two hops. The manager Kevin Cash stood by the wave — two outs, he reasoned, against a staff that rarely grants three singles in sequence — but summarized the evening without varnish: "Today was probably not our best day."4

The sharpest voice belonged to the young third baseman. Television found Junior Caminero after the sixth shouting at his teammates in the dugout, and he made no apology for it afterward: "We had to get outs. In that moment, we weren't doing our job, and against Milwaukee, if you give up outs, they're gonna do that. They're gonna use that against you." This paper's Larceny Desk wrote Saturday that the stop sign demonstrably exists; the ledger now shows outs surrendered on the bases two nights running, while Milwaukee stole five bags of its own Saturday. Caminero's arithmetic for the remainder was unsentimental — the games left, he said, "are mandatory that we've got to win" — and his timetable brisk: "I already forgot about these last two days. The series now, in my mind, starts on Monday."5 The club's own season offers the precedent: 25 wins in 39 one-run games, and a pennant round in which it shook off a deficit to win three straight.48

THE FIREMAN DESK: FIVE OUTS FRIDAY, FIVE MORE SATURDAY, AND STILL NOT A RUN ON HIS OCTOBER LEDGER — ASHBY PASSES GOSSAGE WITH FIFTEEN SCORELESS INNINGS AND TWO-THIRDS, AND ENDS THE GAME ON A CHECK SWING THE BATTER HIMSELF CONCEDED BY MIDNIGHT

While American Family Field came apart around him, the man who ended the game walked off the mound as though leaving a library. Aaron Ashby's five-out save Saturday — one night after five outs of relief in the opener — ran his scoreless streak to open this postseason to 15 2/3 innings, past Rich Gossage's 1981 and Andy Hawkins' 1984 on the all-time roll; only Andrew Miller, with 16 scoreless to begin the October of 2016, stands ahead of him now. His manager reached for the same comparison the record book did — "It's Goose Gossage-like," said Pat Murphy, before amending upward: "It's been incredible. He does what it takes."6

The ninth tested the calm. Handed the ball over the nominal closer Trevor Megill, who stood hot in the bullpen, Ashby allowed Jonny DeLuca a leadoff double, retired Mesa and the pinch-hitter Ben Williamson as the runner worked to third, and then treated Díaz — one of Tampa Bay's best left-handed bats — with the care of a man defusing something: a stolen strike at the top of the zone, three changeups below it, an unexpected curve into the zone at 3-1, and at full count another curve in the dirt that Díaz could not quite hold off. He dropped his bat and started for first; the first-base umpire James Hoye punched him out; the game was over, twice-checked. By midnight the batter had conceded the call: "In the moment, yeah, I disagreed. The umpire said it was a swing. It is what it is."6

The serenity, Ashby allows, was purchased dearly — shoulder surgery in 2023, an 8.04 earned-run figure back at Triple-A in 2024, a demotion to the bullpen, and some Octobers best forgotten. "It's a lot of breathing," he explained. "Just kind of praying for peace, I guess." Asked whether the composure extends to all quarters of his life, the fireman permitted himself a smile: "Traffic makes me mad sometimes."6

THE GLUE DESK: FOUR HOME RUNS ALL SEASON, AND THEN ONE TO DEAD CENTER IN THE WORLD'S SERIES — NINE PITCHES FROM SEYMOUR, ONE SWING FROM FRELICK, AND A DUGOUT NEAR TEARS OVER THE MAN WHO HOLDS THE MACHINE TOGETHER

Jake Bauers, by his own account, almost wept. Brice Turang could not stop screaming. And the author of the blow just wanted back to the dugout to collect a fist bump from his manager. Sal Frelick's game-tying drive to straightaway center — off a 92.9-mile-an-hour fastball, the ninth pitch of the at-bat — was, by the testimony of everyone in Milwaukee colors, the emotional hinge of the evening, and the reaction was in proportion to its unlikelihood. "I've never seen him hit a dead-center homer in BP," said Bauers. "So to see him do it in a World Series game, I couldn't be happier for him."7

The man himself has made a career of the other virtues. "Murph jokes with me," Frelick said of his manager. "He says I can't hit the ball off the ground to center because it'll be an out the rest of my life. So I was just pumped to try to get back to the dugout so I could give him a big fist bump." Murphy, for his part, had spent the afternoon comparing Frelick's edge to that of Dustin Pedroia, whom he coached in college: "full of a swagger and an edge that, when he went out and played, it was like, 'I'm going to get it done.'" The fullest tribute came from the fireman Ashby: "That was my favorite swing of the year. It's not even close... He's the glue guy. He's the guy that keeps this whole thing together."7

The homer was one of four balls Frelick struck hard on a night Milwaukee ground 184 pitches out of the Tampa Bay staff, and it completed the club's second comeback from four runs down this postseason, alongside the one against Los Angeles in the pennant round — a double feat only four other clubs in postseason history have managed in a single October.7

THE EXILE'S DESK: 'FASTBALL FREDDY' AGAINST THE CLUB THAT RAISED HIM — PERALTA, UNBEATEN SINCE LATE AUGUST, STANDS BETWEEN HIS OLD MATES AND THEIR FIRST CHAMPIONSHIP, AND THE TROPICANA LEDGER SAYS HE IS THE MAN FOR THE WORK

The Series' long parade of reunions saves its starkest for Monday. Freddy Peralta — for years the front of Milwaukee's rotation, dealt to Tampa Bay at the July deadline, and lately the most valuable man of the American pennant round — takes the ball in the third game charged with stopping the very club that made him. The form is formidable: 7-0 with an 0.89 earned-run average over his last ten appearances since August 26, and under the Tropicana roof, where Monday's game will be played, a 1.45 figure with 31 strikeouts across seven starts since the trade. The Rays gave him extra rest after his final pennant-round outing precisely so that their best version of him would meet Milwaukee now; as this paper noted Friday, the alignment was built for this game all along.8

Milwaukee's answer is the left-hander Robert Gasser, who began the season at Triple-A Nashville and pitched his way not merely back but into a World's Series rotation: 2-0 with a 1.51 earned-run average in eight appearances since August 26, the postseason included.8 The histories at stake are plain enough. Of the 57 clubs to lead a World's Series two games to none, 46 have finished the job; against which Tampa Bay can cite its own pennant round, in which it trailed Cleveland and won three straight.8 Milwaukee's faithful, meanwhile, have arranged to attend in absentia: the club sold 31,000 tickets at $15 apiece to watch Monday's road game on the scoreboard at American Family Field — capped so every seat could see the screen — and they were gone in minutes.3

THE AERONAUTICS DESK: THE CREW FLIES SOUTH UNDER FAMILY COLORS — PRIESTER'S UNCLE AT THE CONTROLS OF THE TEAM SHIP, HIS COUSIN IN THE FIRST OFFICER'S CHAIR, AND A HOUSEHOLD OF CONVERTED CHICAGOANS CARRYING THE PENNANT WINNERS TO FLORIDA

The charter that carries Milwaukee to Tampa flies, fittingly, as a family affair. By a report of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the captain of the club's flight south is GJ Priester, uncle of the Brewers right-hander Quinn Priester, with Quinn's cousin Alex seated beside him as first officer — a United Boeing 737 crewed, nose to cabin door, by the pitcher's own blood.9

It is not the elder Priester's first turn with the cargo: he flew the club home from Texas after a series against the Rangers in 2025. The pitcher himself has been grounded since June, when an operation on the thoracic outlet ended his season, and watches the run from the dugout rail; his uncle and cousin, raised just outside Chicago, are described as thoroughly converted to the Milwaukee cause. The Herald notes with approval that a club two wins from its first championship travels in hands with a stake in the matter — and trusts the family to deliver the parcel intact.9

The Series stands two games to none, and the sum of the two margins is two runs — a ledger that reads heavier than its arithmetic, for Milwaukee has now won nine of its ten October games, the last two by coming from behind against the best record in the American League. The particulars ahead are verified and as follows: the third, fourth and fifth games under the Tropicana roof Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at eight o'clock Eastern, the Series returning to Milwaukee Friday the 30th if required, with the calendar holding a place for a deciding seventh game on Saturday the 31st.2 The paper adds one caution from its own morgue, courtesy of the man in the stands: the 1982 Brewers of Robin Yount led their Series three games to two and never won another game. Nothing is finished at 2-0 — but the club doing the chipping has given no sign it knows how to stop. Until the next dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts

  1. MLB Box Scores — Sunday, October 25, 2026 — Boxscore
  2. Baseball-Reference.com — Upcoming Schedule and Upcoming Dates — Baseball-Reference
  3. Adam McCalvy, Brewers erase four-run deficit, win 2026 World Series Game 2 — MLB.com
  4. Bryan Hoch, Rays struggle with fundamentals in 2026 World Series Game 2 — MLB.com
  5. Adam Berry, Junior Caminero discusses Rays' miscues in World Series Game 2 — MLB.com
  6. Anthony DiComo, Aaron Ashby's scoreless innings streak continues in World Series Game 2 — MLB.com
  7. Zach Sweet, Sal Frelick hits game-tying home run in World Series Game 2 — MLB.com
  8. Anthony Castrovince, Adam Berry and Adam McCalvy, When is Brewers vs. Rays World Series Game 3? Date, Time and Lineups — MLB.com
  9. Manny Randhawa, Family affair: Priester's uncle, cousin to fly Crew's team plane to Game 3 — MLB.com