Braves Legacy Rings Out Ahead of Potential World Series Clinch

By the end of Tuesday night, a fact is likely to change. The Braves will no longer be the most recent World Series champion in two different cities.

With one more win over the Tampa Bay Rays, the Milwaukee Brewers will be World Series champions. The team that has called the city home since 1970 will win its first ring.

It won’t be the first title for the city, however. Milwaukee celebrated in 1957 when the Braves took down the mighty Yankees dynasty in seven games. They then won another National League pennant the following year.

The team consisted of legendary names, including Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn. They had to get past Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford.

Before Bob Uecker was a legendary Brewers broadcaster, he played left bench for the Braves in his hometown. Wisconsin native John DeMerit was a member of the World Series team.

In a recent interview with the local Fox affiliate in Milwaukee, he was asked if he felt he was carrying the torch from a different era. For him, that was a difficult question to answer.

"Probably not as much as it would be if that same team was here," DeMerit, now 90, said in the interview. "The Braves didn't last too long after that, and they went off to what they thought were better places: Atlanta. But it's hard to answer that otherwise."

He has a point. It was a short-lived era. Not even a decade after this title, the Braves had swapped the M on their cap for an A. Not after the Braves helped over the door to Major League Baseball going west, they also helped set the stage for them to move south.

While it was a short marriage, it proved memorable in baseball lore. Hank Aaron’s only MVP award and his only trips to the Fall Classic happened a short drive north of Chicago.

All but two seasons of Mathews’ career in a Braves uniform happened in Milwaukee, as well as Warren Spahn winning the second-ever Cy Young Award - back when there was only one winner and not two.

However, since then, like Boston learning to embrace only the Red Sox, Milwaukee has moved on with a new team, and the Braves have called Atlanta home since the year The Beatles released Revolver.

At least there will be one continuity: the World Series will come from a team that played in the National League. When the Brewers emerged from the ashes of the Seattle Pilots, which went up in flames after one season, they were part of the American League. They even reached the World Series, representing them in 1982.

Ahead of the 1998 season, they moved to the National League. Coincidentally, that move was made because expansion brought in the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, their current World Series opponent.

Baseball wasn’t quite ready for consistent interleague play. It was a year-old concept at the time. The Brewers' move ensured both leagues had an even number.

It all helped set up this very moment in the post-Milwaukee Braves era.

Think about it. In Milwaukee, there is an older fan. He went through the excitement of getting an MLB team and a World Series nearly 70 years ago. He or she experienced the heartbreak of the Braves moving south and the heartbreak of the St. Louis Cardinals winning the 1982 World Series.

Now he or she will finally get that next bit of joy, and it’s Milwaukee being back on top of the world.

The Braves have their two titles in Atlanta. The Brewers will have their title. Come Tuesday night, maybe now, everyone will have won and had their closure, and there’s something nice about that.

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