Milwaukee Brewers Best Wins against Chicago Cubs

CC Sabathia and Ryan Braun provide the heroics to get the Milwaukee Brewers into the postseason in 2008.

Before the Brewers’ 3-1 win over the Cubs on the final day of the 2008 season, the Milwaukee Brewers’ most memorable win over the Cubs was a late-season victory in 1998.

It was the famous Brant Brown game where he dropped an easy fly ball that led to a Brewers’ walk-off victory and put a small dent in the Cubs’ playoff hopes–the Cubs did end up winning the Wild Card and made the 1998 playoffs.

The CC Sabathia game is one of the most historic victories in Brewers’ franchise history. The Brewers needed to beat the Cubs and the New York Mets to lose to the Florida Marlins to clinch the NL Wild Card. Winning the Wild Card would be the franchise’s first postseason appearance since 1982.

Milwaukee was desperate for playoff baseball, especially after dealing with some dark years.

The Milwaukee Brewers became an awful franchise after 1992. The Brewers failed to finish at or above .500 between 1993 and 2004. The Brewers lost 100 games in 2002 and had hit rock bottom. The Brewers hired Doug Melvin as general manager at the end of the 2002 season, and he started to build up a farm system that featured Rickie Weeks, Prince Fielder, JJ Hardy, Ryan Braun, and Corey Hart.

Those five players helped contribute towards leading the Brewers to a winning record in 2007. The Milwaukee Brewers were ready to contend for the postseason in 2008.

During the 2008 season, Melvin traded for Sabathia in hopes of putting the Crew over the top. The Brewers were cruising into September with a huge lead for the Wild Card.

In September, the Brewers fell apart, which led to the Brewers firing manager Ned Yost. The Crew rallied during the last week of the season to set up a chance to break the franchise’s playoff drought.

The Cubs stood in the Brewers’ way through the first six-innings as Cubs pitching held the Brewers scoreless.

The Milwaukee Brewers tied the game when Craig Counsell drew a bases-loaded walk in the seventh.

Braun came up in the eighth with two outs and blasted a two-run home run that sent the Miller Park crowd into a frenzy.

The bigger hero in the game was Sabathia. He pitched a four-hit complete game on just three-days rest. The image of Sabathia celebrating the win on the mound after getting Derrick Lee to ground into a double play is iconic.

The Brewers still had to wait for the Marlins to beat the Mets to pop the champagne and celebrate the franchise’s first postseason appearance in over a generation.