Former Brewer Brett Phillips becomes World Series Hero

Against all odds, Brett Phillips came through on Saturday night to tie the World Series at 2 games apiece.

Baseball is weird, baseball is fun, baseball is crazy. Heroes are born out of seemingly nowhere, and that is what makes baseball different from all other sports. In basketball, on the final possession, one of the best players gets the ball to try and score. In football, the quarterback will go to his best receiver in crunch time. In hockey, it’s up to the five guys on the ice and usually their best player as well.

In baseball, it’s whoever’s turn it is in the lineup. There’s no mid-game lineup shuffling to get the best players their chance to be clutch. It’s the guy next on the list against the pitcher that the opposing manager picks.

Even with this being the case, the Rays had their best hitter, Randy Arozarena, up with a runner on, two outs, and a chance to launch his tenth home run of this postseason to end it. Arozarena walked to bring up one of the least likely heroes in World Series history, Brett Phillips.

Brett Phillips has not been a good hitter in the major leagues. He wasn’t with the Milwaukee Brewers, he wasn’t with the Royals, and he hasn’t been with the Rays. He holds a career batting average of .202 and an OPS+ of 69, well below the league average of 100. He also had only two postseason at-bats up until his hit last night, and he got out both times.

Phillips has been in a big spot with two outs in the ninth before. You may remember the 2017 Milwaukee Brewers that missed the playoffs by one game and were eliminated on the second-last game of the season against the Cardinals. In that game, Phillips came to the plate, and Quintin Berry stole second to put a runner in scoring position with two down. Phillips struck out, and the Brewers’ playoff hopes were crushed.

Facing Kenley Jensen, one of the premier closers in the MLB, Phillips took ball one and then two questionable strikes. On the fourth pitch, Dodgers catcher Will Smith set up high, and I had flashbacks to that Phillips’ strikeout, which came on a high fastball. Jensen missed his spot with a cutter, however, and left it down just enough for Phillips to get a bat on it and line it into right-center.

Kevin Kiermaier scored easily from second, and as Arozarena steamed around the bases, Chris Taylor booted the ball in centerfield, reminiscent of another moment in recent Brewer history; the Trent Grisham incident. Most Milwaukee Brewers fans probably know Chris Taylor as a great fielder because of the sliding catch he made on a Christian Yelich deep fly ball in game seven of the 2018 NLCS. This time, Taylor didn’t make a great play to save runs, he made a terrible play to cost his team a run, and this season Grisham is a Gold Glove finalist. Baseball. Is. Weird.

The story didn’t end with Taylor’s botch, though, because after Arozarena rounded third, he tripped and fell. The throw came home, and Smith, thinking that Arozarena would be right there, did a quick swipe tag, but hit nothing but air and lost the ball. This allowed Arozarena to scamper home, dive, and score the winning run, immortalizing this moment forever in baseball history.

Brett Phillips, a defensive specialist with a cannon arm and an insanely weird laugh, is now, and forever will be a World Series hero for what he did with that at-bat. In 2018, just days before he was traded to the Royals in the deal that brought Mike Moustakas to Milwaukee, I got a picture with him after a game, and while he was one of my favorite players at the time, I never really thought his career would go anywhere nor that he’d do anything of substance.

In those moments of pure joy after the winning run was scored, nothing else in the world mattered. That’s the real beauty of sports; it brings people together and gives us moments where the world disappears around us. Brett Phillips delivered that moment for the dozens of Rays fans that exist, and for me, a guy who witnessed his second to last game as a Brewer and have been following his career ever since.

People can think that baseball is boring. People can think that the game needs to speed up or that things need to change to get new fans, but the game is perfect the way it is. It’s as beautiful as it’s ever been, and the strange, funky, stupid, ridiculous, exciting nature of the game is what keeps people coming back. It’s the moments and the stories that arise from the madness that gives baseball its charm, and as hard as commissioner Rob Manfred may try to destroy baseball, he can never destroy that. Last night, Brett Phillips added another chapter to the long story of America’s favorite pastime, and that will live on forever.