The Milwaukee Brewers had the best regular season of any team in Major League Baseball. That fact and their outstanding 97-65 record is not doing them any good in the National League Championship Series. They have lost the first three games of that series against the Los Angeles Dodgers and they are on the verge of getting swept out of the series.
Even if they can win Friday's Game 4 at Dodger Stadium, the Brewers would still face long odds of turning things around and beating the Dodgers in four straight games and representing the National League in the World Series. Nevertheless, that's the task facing Pat Murphy's team.
The only time a team has come back from an 0-3 deficit and won a series in Major League Baseball happened 21 years ago. The Boston Red Sox were in an 0-3 hole against the New York Yankees in 2004 and managed to reverse the momentum and beat the Yankees four times in a row. After accomplishing that historic feat, the Red Sox went on to win the World Series for the first time in 86 years.
Hall of Fame manager Joe Torre was the steward of the Yankees in that series, and while he was on the wrong side of history in that matchup, the Yankees won four World Series titles under his leadership. He called Murphy to offer his advice on what the Brewers should do under the circumstances.
Brewers need to take it one inning at a time
The specifics of the conversation between Murphy and Torre have not been revealed, but one of Torre's greatest strengths as a manager was his ability to give his team a sense of calm under the most difficult circumstances. If Murphy can do that for the Brewers, his team will at least have a chance at a comeback.
It may not have worked in 2004, but his Yankees overcame a 2-0 deficit at home when playing the Atlanta Braves in the 1996 World Series to win in six games. It seems likely that the gist of the conversation involved keeping the Brewers on task by taking the game one inning at a time.
Torre was a star player with the Milwaukee Braves in the early part of his career and that gives him a kinship with the city. He played in Milwaukee from 1960 through 1965 before the team moved to Atlanta the following year.
