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1982 World Series

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1982 World Series

The 1982 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 1982 season. The 79th edition of the World Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff played between the National League (NL) champion St. Louis Cardinals and the American League (AL) champion Milwaukee Brewers. The Cardinals won the series, four games to three.

The Cardinals had last been in the World Series in 1968, while a Milwaukee team, the Braves, had last contended in 1958. The Milwaukee team of 1982 started as an expansion club, the Seattle Pilots, in 1969, which then moved to Milwaukee in 1970 and changed their name to the Brewers.

The Cardinals made it to the Series by winning the NL East division by three games over the Philadelphia Phillies, and then defeating the Atlanta Braves, three games to none, in the NL Championship Series. The Brewers made it by winning the AL East division by one game over the Baltimore Orioles, and then defeating the California Angels, three games to two, in the AL Championship Series. 1982 is the Brewers' only World Series appearance to date, and remains their only American League pennant winning season: ironically, the Brewers would join the Cardinals as a member of the National League Central Division in 1998.

The Cardinals' victory helped the National League win four straight World Series from 1979 to 1982, the longest streak of consecutive titles by the National League in World Series history. The National League would not again win consecutive titles until the 2010 Giants, the 2011 Cardinals and the 2012 Giants.

Though the teams had never met before, their home cities had a commercial rivalry in the beer market, as St. Louis is the home of Anheuser–Busch, which owned the Cardinals at the time, while Milwaukee is the home of Miller Brewing and other past major competitors of Anheuser–Busch. This led the media to refer to the series as the "Suds Series".

To date, this is the Brewers’ sole appearance in the World Series, and they have the second longest pennant drought in the National League behind the Pittsburgh Pirates (1979).

The 1982 Milwaukee Brewers hit 216 home runs during the regular season, thus earning them the nickname "Harvey's Wallbangers" (after manager and Milwaukee native, Harvey Kuenn). In sharp contrast, the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals only hit 67 home runs, fewer than the Brewers' Gorman Thomas (with 39 homers) and Ben Oglivie (34 homers) combined. The Cardinals had built their reputation and won their division behind solid pitching, exceptional defense, and aggressive base running, manufacturing runs in a style that would come to be called "Whiteyball," named for team manager Whitey Herzog. This style would be the hallmark of the Cardinals through the 1980s and see them into two more World Series (in 1985 and 1987, both of which they lost in seven games).

The Brewers and Cardinals each boasted a dominant closer, with veteran Rollie Fingers holding the role for Milwaukee and Bruce Sutter for St. Louis. Fingers did not pitch in this series, which would have been his fourth, due to a muscle tear in his arm.

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