Monday in St. Petersburg belonged to Wisconsin. Thousands of Brewers fans in yellow and powder blue filled the downtown streets from early morning. Some cast a line off the pier. Then they walked the mile to Tropicana Field and took the place over. By the late innings most of the home fans had left, and one chant rang off the roof. Let’s Go Brewers. “It felt like a home game,” said pitcher Brandon Woodruff.
It was a rout. The Brewers beat the Rays 10-1 in Game 3, with eight runs in the fifth inning alone. Jackson Chourio had four hits. Starter Robert Gasser gave up one hit over six shutout innings. “Normally it’s 35,000 against 9,” Gasser said. On Monday he counted 20,000 people on his side. The Journal’s Jared Diamond reports that Milwaukee went to bed one win from the first title in franchise history. Wednesday’s paper went to press before Game 4, so that’s where we leave the score.
Here’s the money part. The cheapest resale seats for Games 1 and 2 in Milwaukee ran about $2,500. At the Trop, they were around $500. Add a flight and a hotel and the trip south still came out cheaper than staying home. So Wisconsin flew. The Rays have never drawn well. They ranked 28th of 30 this season and have sat in the bottom five every year since 2011. Their new owners hope a Tampa stadium due in 2029 fixes that. The fans who couldn’t travel found each other anyway. A sellout crowd of 31,000 packed American Family Field just to watch on the big screen. Across town the Bucks drew 10,674, their smallest home crowd since 2015 outside the Covid season.
They remember $2 seats
Jason Gay spent Game 2 with the fans old enough to remember 1982, the only other Brewers World Series. Two brothers, 74 and 71, were there in 1982 because one of them won a ticket lottery, and four tickets came in the mail. A 54-year-old who was 10 that year biked to County Stadium with his classmates. A grandstand seat cost two dollars then, he told Gay, still a little amazed. The handful of resale tickets left on Saturday were priced like a Caribbean vacation. Milwaukee lost Game 7 that year, 6-3, after leading 3-1. The city threw a parade anyway. Forty-four years later, the kids who cried then flew to Florida.
Our read
This is a Cash Flow story (M5), and it’s the good kind. The fans priced the whole trip. The ticket was one line on it. A $2,500 seat at home lost to a $500 seat plus a flight plus a hotel. That’s the all-in habit, and most people only use it to say no. They’ll skip the small treat all month and then buy the pricey seat at home because it feels responsible. The honest comparison is total against total. Sometimes the trip is the cheap option. The $2 seat is the other lesson. Over 44 years the things you love get expensive. The memory didn’t.
The concrete thing in your plan is the fun line, the money set aside each year for the one big thing. If it’s in the plan, a World Series trip is just a withdrawal. This week, take one splurge you’re weighing and price it the whole-trip way, every piece, against the alternative. Then decide. The fans who did that math are the ones in the stands. We’d rather the fun line be in the plan before the next big series. That’s what a review is for.