The Champions Got the Last Out, and the Last Laugh Was on the Yankees

The final out of this year's championship ended up in the glove of a man the Yankees traded away.

Milwaukee finished off Tampa Bay 4-1 in Game 5 on Wednesday night at Tropicana Field, taking the series four games to one and giving the Brewers the first championship the franchise has ever won. Closer Trevor Megill got pinch-hitter Richie Palacios to roll a grounder to second. Brice Turang picked it up and fired across, and former Yankee Jake Bauers squeezed it at first base.

Pat Murphy, the Brewers manager, ended the night with that ball. Bauers carried it with him through the celebration on the field and the presentation of the trophy, and only then did he find Murphy and give it to him.

What Murphy said back is the part every Yankees fan should have to hear. In video of the exchange shot on the field, Murphy first tells Bauers, who becomes a free agent this winter, that he is about to come into a lot of money. Then he offers some advice in case the Yankees come calling again:

"Just remember when you were on that horseshit Yankee team, and you guys are all playing for yourselves. Just remember. Say, 'This is the way we used to do it.'"

The two kept going. Murphy teases Bauers for swinging at everything on a 3-1 count, "auto-swinging," as he puts it, and Bauers answers that he does it every time. Bauers adds that a 3-0 pitch has no chance against him either. It is the sort of ribbing that only happens between people who trust each other. The punch line, though, was aimed at the Bronx.

Bauers would not be a stranger there. He played 84 games for New York in 2023 and hit .202 with 12 home runs, 30 runs batted in and 95 strikeouts. That Yankees club went 82-80 and finished fourth in the American League East, missing the playoffs. In November 2023 New York traded him to Milwaukee for two minor leaguers.

In Milwaukee he became a different hitter. This year he batted .266 with 26 homers and 86 RBIs over 144 games, career highs across the board, and he was named the most valuable player of the National League Championship Series. Milwaukee went 103-59, the best record in the majors, then lost just two of its 13 games in October.

Nobody would call Murphy an accident either. He spent more than 20 years as a college head coach, at Notre Dame and then Arizona State, where one of his Notre Dame players was a young infielder named Craig Counsell. He ran minor league clubs for San Diego and served as the Padres' interim manager for 96 games in 2015. In 2016 he joined Counsell's staff in Milwaukee as the No. 2 man on the bench, and he took over the club when Counsell left for the Cubs. He is 67 now, and he finally has a ring.

His teams are built on the opposite of what he was mocking. When a player gives his manager the one ball from the first title in team history, the clubhouse is telling you who it plays for.

For anyone that watched that post-game celebration, the one thing that stands out is how much the Brewers love each other. They compete and play the game the right way, with maximum effort at all times, not just because it is the obvious and right thing to do at the major league level, but because they are doing it for each other. Anyone who has ever been part of something larger than themselves understands this dynamic - when everyone is pulling in the same direction and striving for one common goal, I can't let up, even for a moment, because doing so would be to fail my brother. That's how winning organizations are run. That's how the 1990's Yankees played. That's how the Brewers play the game.

Now look at the team on the other end of the joke. The Yankees routinely beat themselves with sloppy play, a lack of focus, and worst of all, a lack of effort. There is never any accountability from the manager or the front office, and explanations from players about the latest idiotic play or decision is always "I was trying to make something happen..." When a player is seen loafing after a ball, sucking a lollipop in the box, going for third in a playoff game and getting thrown out by 15 feet, etc, there is never a shred of the notion that doing so let down the team. It is just normal course of business that gets glossed over amidst another season of getting humiliated in the playoffs.

That is what makes Murphy's line sting. Murphy's complaint was about how a team plays, and he made it about the Yankees with a champion's ball in his hand and a champion's grin on his face. It was a laugh among winners, and New York was the joke.

For an organization that measures itself in titles, that hurts. For the fans who live and breathe Yankees pinstripes, it is shameful. Why do we not change course on something that seems so obviously broken? It is hard to know. Perhaps winning isn't the measurement anymore.

Selfless, scrappy and hard nosed baseball wins. And is infinitely more fun for the fans to watch. Better yet, it keeps you from being the laughing stock of the sport.

The Yankees will spend this winter re-signing the front office and blaming the players. In Milwaukee, they will be passing out rings and having a good old laugh at the team in the Bronx.