The Brewers Are Eating the Elephant

There is an old saying that goes, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

In baseball terms, how do you eat the two-time reigning champs with a $412 million payroll and steamroll into the World Series? One shrewd acquisition at a time.

Throughout the National League Championship Series, the ragtag Milwaukee Brewers played their most inspired ball of the season, taking down the almighty Los Angeles Dodgers in a series that marked a slight shift in National League power. The Brewers — forever subject to backhanded compliments about being better than the sum of their parts, or great for a small market team — are also just immensely talented. There’s no two ways about it. A team doesn’t progress this deep into the postseason without having some dogs that can put the barrel on the ball and prevent the other team from doing the same. But if you were to stop a random person on the street and ask them if they know who Shohei Ohtani is, it’s fairly likely they could tell you he’s a baseball player, or that they’ve at least heard the name. If you asked the same thing about Jake Bauers, they might furrow their brow and wonder aloud if that’s someone they went to high school with. Quite honestly, showing them a photo of Bauers might only reinforce the idea that he’s a long lost childhood classmate, what with his everyman appearance and Saved by the Bell sounding name. What you really need to do to jog the memory is play them a sound, particularly this one of Bauers’ bat taking a large chunk out of the elephant.