The Brewers deserved every bit of this. They led MLB in wins and run differential in the regular season, then went on a tear through the playoffs, losing two games by a combined two runs. They came a half-inning away from becoming the first team ever to sweep the championship series and the World Series under the current series lengths. (The Reds did it in 1976, when the CS was only best-of-five.)

It’s gotta be whiplash for Brewers fans. This team had only made the World Series once, back in 1982. After that, they wouldn’t even make the playoffs for another 26 years, until 2008.

With Milwaukee’s win, there are now just four MLB teams that have never won a World Series — the Mariners, Padres, Rockies, and the Rays team the Brewers just beat. Apologies to Seattle for the double L here (since the Brewers were initially the Seattle Pilots) and apologies to Tampa Bay for the triple L, since they’ve now made the World Series three times and lost all of them.

Of Wisconsin’s three major pro sports teams, the one with the longest championship drought is now … the Green Bay Packers! No, I don’t believe it either.

The defining moment of the World Series was the Brewers’ eight-run, two-out rally in the fifth inning of Game 5. No home runs, just seven straight hits with runners on base.

We wrote earlier this year about how the Brewers hit the ball the opposite way while everybody else in the league is trying to pull the ball; four of the seven hits in that rally went to the opposite field.

What an unbelievable first full year in the majors for That Kid Who Throws The Ball One Million Miles Per Hour. Twenty-four-year-old Jacob Misiorowski won both his World Series starts with a 0.84 ERA and threw the fastest pitch in World Series history, 103.5 miles per hour. They haven’t given out the Cy Young Award yet, but when he wins it in a few months, he’ll officially be the first player to win the Cy and win the deciding game of the World Series in the same season since Orel Hershiser in 1988.

Weirdly, Misiorowski got only five strikeouts between his two starts — the two lowest strikeout totals of his season; he had at least four in every regular-season game he started — but he was still dominant.

MVP honors went to catcher William Contreras, who hit .381 but arguably won for his performance behind the plate. In the first year of the league’s automated ball-strike challenge system, Contreras clearly knew the strike zone better than anybody, winning 105 overturns, the most in the league. He continued that in the World Series by getting 10 overturns on 13 challenges. Contreras also threw out four of nine runners attempting to steal bases, including both attempts by the Rays’ elite speedster Chandler Simpson.

The award easily could’ve gone to Jackson Chourio, who hit .458; both Contreras and Chourio also won the World Baseball Classic with Venezuela in March. (So did relief pitcher Antonio Senzatela.) In the previous five World Baseball Classics, only two players had won the tournament and won the World Series in the same year — Alex Bregman and Luke Gregerson, who pulled the double for Team USA and the Astros in 2017.

My MVP, though, was Brewers reliever Aaron Ashby, who appeared in nine postseason games and allowed zero runs. Only two pitchers have ever pitched more scoreless postseason innings: Christy Mathewson in 1905 and Kenny Rogers in 2006. Ashby allowed only one of the 20 batters he faced in the World Series to reach base.

(He’s best friends with Landry Shamet, who helped the Knicks snap a similarly long championship drought in June.)

(Sorry. Had to.)

So congratulations, Milwaukee, on your long-awaited win in the 2026 World Series. And since the 2027 World Series isn’t exactly guaranteed to take place, you might get to celebrate it for a while.

Before we get mad at anybody else, we should get mad at the ownership group of the Dream, which botched this badly. Annie Costabile of The Athletic reported that teams received the projected playoff dates last December and were given a month to work out potential conflicts with the league. I guess they didn’t think their team was good enough to make the Finals … or didn’t realize how embarrassing it would be to play a Finals game in a 3,000-seat venue.

Apparently, the Dream didn’t even try to figure out where Game 6 would be played while they were making similar maneuvers to open up State Farm for Games 3 and 4. ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne said that the situation might have been resolved “had these requests been made a few weeks ago… or even a week ago.”

However, I’m also getting a little bit mad at the NBA and the Atlanta Hawks … let’s say … 42 percent. While the Hawks and Dream are not co-owned by the same group, as many NBA-WNBA franchises in the same city are, the NBA itself holds a 42 percent stake in the WNBA. While the NBA’s primary product obviously remains the NBA itself, the league literally has a vested interest in the success and growth of the W — growth that is hampered by relegating a WNBA Finals game to a weekday afternoon. The NBA should have prioritized a Finals game in the WNBA over the sixth of 82 regular-season NBA games.

And not just an NBA regular-season game: An Atlanta Hawks game. What are we doing here?

There was apparently a solution to play the game Friday night — WWE even agreed to move back its usual Friday night Smackdown event so the WNBA could broadcast that night. However, the plan was apparently vetoed by WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, since it would have moved a potential Game 7 to next week’s Election Night, which is a bad look from a civic perspective as well as bad for ratings.

By the way, Engelbert is retiring after this season, and probably should want a Game 7 more than anybody. You don’t want your last moment as league commissioner to be handing out the trophy on the practice court.

There is a long history of WNBA Finals games being displaced from teams’ home arenas. As Ryan Nanni chronicled on this week’s episode of Phantom Island, seven of the last 21 WNBA Finals have featured at least one game played in an alternate venue. The WNBA championship has been awarded at three mid-major college basketball venues (Eastern Michigan in 2008, UIC in 2014, and George Mason in 2018) as well as a random arena in suburban Gwinnett County in Georgia (2013).

However, the reason for moving has changed. This entire debacle is taking place not because the league is getting dumped from its usual home arena due to scheduling conflicts or renovations. This time, they’re trying to upgrade from their usual venue.

Watching 17,000 fans packing an arena on a weekday, watching Valks fans crowd into bars … I feel like snafus like this are a thing of the past. The league’s fanbase has grown too big for these screw-ups to dampen the enthusiasm of its supporters — and when teams and the league mess up like this, they’re hurting their own ability to cash in on the excitement of fans. And that’s not a mistake that people with money make twice.

Yes, this year features the debut of the 76-team NCAA tournament field in 2027. The NCAA has officially released blank brackets for the 76-team fields, and they are deeply upsetting. Please do not click this link; it will ruin your day.

Power conference teams can go a solid 9-9 in conference and be fine. ESPN projects three of the four power conferences to send at least 10 teams to the men’s Tournament. They’re projecting thirteen of the 16 SEC teams to make the women’s bracket.

As tip-off approaches, there are still dozens of players awaiting court rulings on their eligibility. Just last week, Kansas added four-year Purdue starter Trey Kaufman-Renn, the 59th pick in this year’s NBA Draft, hoping to claim his redshirt freshman season shouldn’t count against his five-in-five eligibility. Here’s a nice rundown explaining 13 men’s teams with eligibility issues and how it might affect their season; unfortunately, it is more than a week old and therefore completely outdated.

The women’s season features two returning National Players of the Year: UConn’s Sarah Strong, who was utterly dominant on both sides of the floor last year, and USC’s JuJu Watkins, who won the award in 2025 before tearing her ACL in the NCAA Tournament.

With Watkins back, USC feels like the most interesting team in the country. Watkins pairs up with last year’s National Freshman of the Year, Jazzy Davidson, plus USC landed the top recruit in this year’s freshman class, Saniyah Hall, who won MVP at last year’s U19 World Cup. That could be three #1 WNBA Draft picks, right there — and we have no idea how they’ll work together because none of them have ever played together.

But South Carolina is ranked #1 in the polls after beating UConn in last year’s Final Four and finishing as national runner-up. It loses four starters from last year’s squad — but it’s getting back bigs Chloe Kitts and Ashlyn Watkins, two projected first-round picks who were recovering from injuries last year. (Watkins also said she was dealing with personal issues last year.)

This is going to shock you, but Duke men’s basketball has a bunch of five-star freshmen again. The jewel of this year’s class is Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje, the son of former Georgetown player Ruben Boumtje Boumtje. The 17-year old Boumtje Boumtje reclassified up a year; he’ll play at least two seasons at Duke since he won’t be eligible for the pros until the 2028 NBA Draft. (Same with Marcus Spears Jr. at Texas.) The Blue Devils aren’t all freshmen, though — they’ve added Wisconsin’s leading scorer, John Blackwell, a senior who might be able to calm things down so Duke doesn’t blow another huge lead in a critical NCAA Tournament game.

However, the #1 team in the poll is Florida, which returns five of the top six scorers from last year’s team, which was a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament. All five starters are on ESPN’s Top 100 players list.

Who am I picking to win it all? I’m going with UConn and UConn, because I’m going to UConn men’s and women’s basketball games next week and don’t want the UConn fans I meet to get mad at me. (Follow @homefieldIRL for more details! See you there UConn fans!)