October 20: A Fall Classic Without a Champion

For the first time since 1980, baseball is guaranteed a first-time World Series champion.

Last night at Tropicana Field, the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Cleveland Guardians 7–3 in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series and won the pennant. They will face the Milwaukee Brewers, and neither franchise has ever won a World Series. When the Fall Classic opens Friday in Milwaukee, one long wait is guaranteed to end, something that hasn’t happened in 46 years.

Eighteen Years to the Day

Freddy Peralta pitched 5⅓ tough innings, and Junior Caminero and Yandy Díaz each hit a two-run homer. Díaz had guaranteed a Game 6 win the day before. His shot in the bottom of the eighth answered a Cleveland rally and put the game away. The pennant capped a strong October for Tampa Bay. The Rays swept the New York Yankees in the Division Series, then trailed Cleveland two games to one before winning three straight. Peralta was named ALCS MVP after going 2–0 with a 0.75 ERA. The timing was fitting: the Rays clinched on October 19, exactly 18 years after they won their first pennant in 2008. In the National League, the Brewers had already clinched on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium.

Both franchises have spent their histories waiting for this. The Rays joined the majors as an expansion team in 1998 and lost their two previous World Series, to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008 and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. The Brewers began in 1969 as the Seattle Pilots, moved to Milwaukee a year later, and have reached the Fall Classic only once before, in 1982, when they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. That was 44 years ago. Two smaller-market clubs with no titles between them are now four wins from the first championship in franchise history.

Two baseball players in navy, light blue, and gold uniforms facing each other across a lit stadium infield at night

Two franchises with a combined 85 seasons and no championships will meet with the sport’s biggest prize at stake.

The last World Series between two teams without a title came in 1980, when the Phillies beat the Kansas City Royals in six games and set off a celebration in Philadelphia nearly a century in the making. This year’s matchup also says something about the people left out. Cleveland’s loss extended the Guardians’ drought to 78 years, the longest in the majors. For fans in Tampa Bay and Milwaukee, many of whom have followed these teams their whole lives without seeing a parade, the next week and a half will produce a new name on the list of champions, and a city that celebrates for the first time.