Before the Brewers Were Champions, They Were the Seattle |
Before the Brewers Were Champions, They Were the Seattle
Milwaukee’s first World Series championship is also an occasion to remember the unlikely pioneers who brought baseball back to Wisconsin.
Will O'Toole | November 3, 2026
The Milwaukee Brewers have finally won their first World Series championship, in the franchise’s 58th season, dating back to 1969. Of course, the club wasn’t always known as the Brewers. It began life as the Seattle Pilots, an American League expansion team that lasted just one season before financial problems, logistical nightmares, and front-office ineptitude brought the organization to bankruptcy.
Seizing the opportunity to return Major League Baseball to Wisconsin for the first time since the Braves departed for Atlanta, Allan “Bud” Selig convinced the Lords of Baseball to approve the sale of the moribund Pilots and their move to the Midwest.
Baseball, brews, and brats were back in Wisconsin in 1970, just days before Opening Day and the start of a new decade—one that would see small-market franchises win eight World Series titles.
The circumstances surrounding Milwaukee’s acquisition of the club were so chaotic that seamstresses were still sewing the new name, “Brewers,” onto the old Seattle jerseys shortly before the first pitch. Thus, the Seattle Pilots—destitute, desperate, and disillusioned—became Wisconsin’s beloved Brew Crew.
One must understand that the Pilots’ strategy provided a blueprint for how NOT to build a winning organization. Perhaps they plagiarized the plans of another expansion franchise, the New York Mets, which became a “thing” in 1962.
The Mets, however, had a certain nostalgic appeal. Their management romanticized the glory days of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, two teams that collectively won six National League pennants during the 1950s—seven if you count the Dodgers’ 1959........