Brewers Win World Series Game 1 Twice, Once for the Fans and Once for the Replay Booth

Milwaukee has waited 44 years to win a World Series game. On Friday night it won one twice, which is either greed or Wisconsin thrift. If you have already paid for the celebration, you use it.

The facts, for anyone who left early to beat traffic and therefore saw the better ending. The Brewers led the Tampa Bay Rays 3-2 in the ninth. Bases loaded, one out. Liam Hicks hit a ground ball into what everyone in American Family Field agreed was a game-ending double play. Players celebrated. Fans celebrated. The postgame crew walked onto the field with the confidence of people who have never once been asked to walk back.

Then the Rays challenged. Replays showed rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt's right foot was slightly off second base as he reached for a high throw from Brice Turang. Slightly. The width of a sock. Baseball is the only sport where a man can be out by a shoelace and a city can be heartbroken by a toe.

The call was overturned. Hicks was still out at first, but the Rays now had runners on second and third with two outs, and the field had a crowd problem. Dozens of people, and a few golf carts, had to leave so the game could resume. Nothing in sport is as humbling as a golf cart in reverse. It cannot do it with dignity. It beeps. It knows.

One imagines a stagehand carrying a podium back to the tunnel like a fridge bought on impulse. One imagines a champagne cork being told to stay in the bottle and think about what it had done. Hope is a beautiful thing until it needs a forklift.

Trevor Megill, who had already been congratulated once, returned to the mound to earn it. He struck out Jonny DeLuca, and the Brewers won 3-2 for the second time in a single inning, the most efficient use of a lead in franchise history.

"You have a big range of emotions," Milwaukee captain Christian Yelich said. "It's a big credit to Trev for locking back in right there and making some huge pitches after you have that emotional dump and then have to get back on it." Elsewhere, an emotional dump is what happens at a wedding. In Milwaukee it is called the ninth inning.

It was a night of things going too far. Jacob Misiorowski's first pitch hit 103.5 mph, a World Series record, which is less a pitch than a moving violation. Before the game, Rays slugger Junior Caminero launched a batting-practice ball into the Fox studio desk and broke a microphone into several pieces. Television has spent decades asking athletes for a word. Caminero gave them a statement.

The lesson for Game 2, Saturday at 8 p.m. ET, is simple. Win first. Review second. Golf carts last. The Brewers lead the series 1-0, the Rays have a challenge flag that works, and the grounds crew has a new standing order: never trust a double play until a man in a dark room has watched it eleven times.

Milwaukee waited 44 years for this. It can wait 90 seconds for a foot.