MILWAUKEE — Cubs manager Craig Counsell walked slowly to the mound Saturday night, boos finding him like he was Pat Riley returning to Madison Square Garden with the Heat, Nick Saban returning to LSU with Alabama, Rick Pitino returning to Kentucky with Louisville or — egads — Ben Johnson returning to Detroit with the Bears.
All rolled up into one, more like it.
Tensions were higher than high for the deciding Game 5 of the National League Division Series between the Cubs and Counsell’s former team, the Brewers. And the opposing skippers — Counsell and Pat Murphy, his former longtime bench coach here — were at the center of everything, pulling every strategic lever they could find, particularly with their pitchers, with advancement to the NL Championship Series against the Dodgers on the line.
So when Counsell walked out to pull Colin Rea, the Cubs’ second hurler of the day, with the bases loaded in the fourth inning, fans at American Family Field, already enjoying a 2-1 Brewers lead, took a break from savoring a potential rally to let their former pal have it. What else were they going to do, thank him for coming and offer him a beer brat with extra kraut?
The Cubs’ Daniel Palencia came in and escaped that jam. But the hits never followed for the visitors, who fell 3-1.
Season over.
“I’m disappointed, sad,” Counsell said. “I think this team did a lot to honor the Chicago Cub uniform. In the big picture, that’s how I feel, but what did we do wrong tonight? That’s kind of what you’re stuck on. Why couldn’t we get anything going? It’s hard to get past that right now.”
It was a tense series in a rivalry that’s growing more tense by the year and promises to be kicked up yet another notch by the time these teams renew acquaintances in 2026. Nothing takes a good rivalry to the next level quite like a postseason fight.
It was one thing for Counsell to return here for regular-season games the last two seasons. It was quite another to go back to his longtime stomping grounds for Games 1 and 2 of the NLDS.
But a winner-take-all Game 5? One more ride up I-94 to face all that pressure, all that bile and, as it turned out, all that despair? It had to hit different whether or not Counsell felt like playing along with the narrative.
“I’m just thinking about: How do we advance?” he said Friday. “It’s almost like the opponent doesn’t matter right now.”
But the opponent always matters. Relationships matter. Fans matter. History matters.
There was such irony in Counsell returning for one last game to try to pile onto the Brewers’ painful postseason losing streak — six “series” in a row, if we include a one-off wild-card game in 2019 — because so many of those bitter endings came on Counsell’s watch and tore at his heart, too.
Folks here aren’t disappointed in Counsell merely because he left his hometown team for the Brewers’ biggest rival. It’s also because of all the highs and lows they experienced together with him.
No one here will forget 2018, when the Brewers won their last eight regular-season games to force a divisional tiebreaker at Wrigley Field, which they also won, before sweeping the Rockies in the NLDS, their first postseason series under Counsell. Alas, the NL Championship Series against the Dodgers ended cruelly, with a Game 7 loss at home despite a Christian Yelich first-inning home run that gave the Brewers the lead and sent locals’ spirits into orbit.
In the 2019 wild-card game at Nationals Park, the Brewers raced to a 3-0 lead on a pair of homers off the great Max Scherzer. They still led by two runs when Counsell turned to dominant lefty reliever Josh Hader, who, with only four outs to go, found trouble, loading the bases for Juan Soto. Base hit to right. Ball skips under Trent Grisham’s glove. Three runs in. Nats go on to win the World Series.
The 2020 Brewers were swept out of the wild-card round by the Dodgers. In 2021, after winning the division, they were eliminated in Game 4 of the NLDS after blowing another late lead, with Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman homering off Hader for the final, winning run as the Braves marched to a championship.
By 2023, there was a knock on Counsell — who’d won two World Series as a player — that he didn’t win in October. And then it got worse, the division-winning Brewers getting swept at home by the wild-card Diamondbacks. Despite taking leads of 3-0 in Game 1 and 2-0 in Game 2, it still fell apart.
Well, the Brewers have won a series now. And they did it against the winning manager in team history, one they were none too sorry to beat.
“The Cubs pushed us right to the brink here, and that was not an easy series for us,” Brewers general manager Matt Arnold told the Sun-Times in a jubilant clubhouse. “They ground us down. A credit to those guys, credit to Craig. But our guys are celebrating right now, and I’m happy to be a part of it.”
One supposes Counsell was outmaneuvered. Then again, how could he or anyone have known Shota Imanaga would come unglued and be unusable even on full rest? Or that Kyle Tucker wouldn’t hit?
Two years ago with the Brewers, having lost again — and privately determined to seek a new managerial challenge — Counsell lamented, “The playoffs are a tough animal to conquer. They are. Unfortunately, we have not.”
Now, his Cubs have not.
Can’t catch the Brewers for the division. Can’t beat them in October. Really?
Maybe next year.