Brewers bizarre World Series magic

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Don't look now Milwaukee Brewers fans, but it's happening again.

In one of baseball's strangest on-going themes, the National League team that has eliminated the Brewers has gone on to the World Series every year since 2018! (Well, except for 2022 when the Brewers didn't make the playoffs at all.)

If the Brewers postseason failures cause you a great deal of pain, stop reading here but if you feel like going through it all over again, well, here you go.

In 2018, the Brewers went on a magical ride that took them all the way to game 7 of the National League Championship Series. But sadly, a 5-1 loss to the Dodgers sent Los Angeles to the World Series and left the Crew a painful one game short of the Fall Classic.

One year later, the Brewers were in a prime position to go on another deep postseason run, leading the Washington Nationals 3-1 in the 8th inning of the one-game Wild Card round. But with two outs, Brewers star pitcher Josh Hader gave up three runs and the Brewers season came to a crushing end. The National rode the momentum of their late-inning heroics all the way to their first World Series title.

In 2020, the Brewers once again fell in the Wild Card round, losing their best-of-three series to the Dodgers… and this time, LA finished the job, winning their first World Series since 1988.

In 2021, the Brewers 95-67 record allowed them to bypass the Wild Card round altogether and took them straight to the National League Division Series. But the results were the same, with the Crew falling in four games to the Atlanta Braves. By now, you know the theme… the Braves went on to win the World Series for the first time since 1995.

The Brewers missed out on the postseason in 2022 but returned in 2023. Unfortunately, their trip to the Wild Card series finished the way it always seems to, with a two-game sweep at the hands of the Arizona Diamondbacks and, stop us if you've heard this before, the Diamondbacks went on to the World Series.

Now listen, we're not going to re-live the details of what happened last week against the Mets, it's still a little too painful. But since dealing the Brewers that devastating Wild Card loss, the "other" team from New York hasn't slowed down, making quick work of their division rivals, the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Division Series and are now getting ready for the NLCS against the winner of tonight's Dodgers/Padres game.

And if the Mets manage to win that series, they'll return to the World Series for the third time this century, looking for their first title since 1986 -- all, apparently, because they were fortunate enough to face the Brewers in the playoffs.