MILWAUKEE – Not even historic rainfall and flash flooding could keep fans from American Family Field on Sunday, and not even an early five-run deficit could keep the Brewers from finding their way into the win column once again.
William Contreras hit a pair of home runs, Joey Ortiz drove in three runs with a pair of clutch two-out hits and Isaac Collins hit his first career walk-off home run leading off the bottom of the ninth inning as the Brewers climbed all the way back from a five-run deficit in the middle of the fourth inning to claim a ninth consecutive victory, 7-6 over the Mets – all after the club pushed forward with plans to play ball surrounded by flooded streets and homes as the result of a relentless rainstorm the night before.
The Brewers said fans who couldn’t get to the game would receive credits on their account for unused tickets and prepaid parking passes to use towards any remaining 2025 regular-season home game. Fans in that circumstance should expect to receive an email before noon CT on Monday with instructions for accessing that credit.
But of the paid crowd of 42,461 – the Brewers’ seventh straight sold-out home game, something they hadn’t done since 2008 – a club spokesperson said that 33,700 fans did make it through the turnstiles, reflecting how Contreras & Co. have captured the city’s imagination while rocketing to the top of the MLB standings with 25 victories in their last 29 games.
It’s not just the winning, it’s the way the Brewers are winning that stands out. After winning only two of the first 22 games in which the opponent scored first, the Brewers have now come back to win 21 of the last 31 times that’s happened, including in all three games of their sweep of the Mets.
Sunday’s game unfolded like so many of the ones before it, with the Brewers pecking away. Contreras homered in consecutive innings in the fourth and fifth as the Brewers cut a 5-0 deficit to 6-5, and Ortiz punched a two-out single past diving Mets first baseman Pete Alonso for a 6-6 tie in the eighth as the Brewers scored off former Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley for the second straight day. That set up Collins to win it in the ninth with a leadoff shot against Edwin Díaz.
First, officials had to make the decision to play ball.
“It’s not a simple situation, but the fact is that the building is in great shape, so we’re very fortunate that there’s no damage or flooding in the structure,” Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger said an hour before Brewers starter Quinn Priester’s first pitch. “After talking internally and talking with folks who understand what’s happening in and around the ballpark with closures, and with access, we felt that it was the right thing to do to play the game.”
Two of the main access roads feeding stadium parking lots – W. Canal St. and Brewers Blvd. (Wisconsin Hwy 175) were under water, as were approximately half of the more than 13,000 parking spots in the lots themselves, according to the Brewers. The worst of the flooding was on Brewers Blvd., a multi-lane highway that directly neighbors the ballpark but is separated by a tall floodwall that was built after an earlier storm caused significant flood damage inside then-Miller Park in June 2009, including in the clubhouses.
That left only two ways into the parking lots, N. Mitchell Blvd. and from N. Story Parkway, and there were long lines of vehicles attempting to get in as of one hour before the scheduled first pitch.
Players and uniformed staff, however, were all accounted for, and Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns said the visitors’ team buses were able to get to the stadium without incident on Sunday morning.
“We thought about [delaying the first pitch], but candidly, we didn’t know that would necessarily … lead to any more access roads to the ballpark, so we felt like, ‘Let’s just start the game at 1 o’clock instead of trying to communicate a different time and adjusting all of the work schedules,’” Schlesinger said. “We have a lot of game day staff coming in, and to their credit, most of them are able to make it here and wanted to be here.”
Everyone wants to be at American Family Field these days, with the Brewers riding an eight-game winning streak into Sunday’s series finale against the Mets, with 23 wins in their previous 27 games and the best record in the Major Leagues.
Sunday was another sellout, the Brewers’ seventh in a row – the first such streak since the summer of 2008 when CC Sabathia was helping to carry the franchise to its first postseason appearance in 26 years. In light of the flooding, the Brewers anticipated a significant disparity between the announced attendance and the number of fans actually in seats, but as folks rose for the national anthem, every section was occupied.
“In my career with the Brewers, we’ve never had this kind of run of success,” Schlesinger said. “Then you add to the fact you’ve got such great storylines with [Jacob] Misiorowski, with Andrew Vaughn, the genuineness and authenticity of Pat Murphy, and the fact that people counted us out after the first four games when we did not play well. There’s been a little bit of a surprise with the team on the field, and it’s fun to watch.”
Speaking of Misiorowski, the Brewers went forward with Sunday’s T-shirt giveaway promotion featuring the rookie All-Star, but said they would hold a second Misiorowski T-shirt day later this season.