The 1982 World Series was played between the American League (AL) champion Milwaukee Brewers and the National League (NL) champion St. Louis Cardinals from October 12 to October 20, 1982. The series was scheduled at Busch Stadium (II) in Cardinals and County Stadium in Milwaukee. This championship represented the last time (until 2009) that the NL consecutive won the World Series titles. It was a best-of-seven series played in the 1982 World Series.
Previous Series Matches
The Game 1 was all Brewers, which they won 10-0 in nine innings and took the lead 1-0. It was really embarrassing for the Cardinals in front of their home crowd. Nevertheless, the Cardinals came back and answered the questions of all those critics that were rose in the Game 1 by defeating the Brewers 5-4 in an exciting Game 2, and evened the series 1-1.
Cardinals continued their winning streak by defeating the Brewers 6-2 in Game 3 in front of the Brewers’ home crowd, and took the lead 2-1. However, Brewers stopped the Cardinals winning streak by defeating them 7-5 and 6-4 in the Game 4 and 5 respectively, and took the lead 3-2 in the series. Now, everyone began to speculate if the Cardinals can win their ‘must-win’ game, or they will be going home without the World Series trophy. But, they showed the champion’s spirit and evened the series 3-3 by defeating the Brewers 13-1 in Game 6.
Game 7
It was all square; either of the teams can win the series. Both teams had shown why they are the league champions in the previous matches. Game 7 was played on the Wednesday, October 20, 1982 at the St. Louis Cardinals home ballpark, Busch Stadium (II).
Game 7 was scoreless until when the Cardinals’ Lonnie Smith scores a RBI (Run-batted-in) single at the bottom of the fourth inning, and Cardinals took the lead 1-0.
In the fifth inning, Brewers’ Ben Oglivie scored a solo home run and evened up the game 1-1. In the sixth inning, Brewers took the lead 3-1 at the top of the sixth inning when Cecil Copper hit a sacrifice fly and Jim Gantner scored on an error. However, in the bottom of the sixth inning, Cardinals’ Keith Hernandez tied the game with a 2-run single and George Hendrick’s RBI single gave the Cardinals lead of 4-3 at the end of the sixth inning.
In the eighth inning, Cardinals’ Steve Braun and Darrell Porter scored two RBI singles and increased the lead with 6-3. Brewers’ were unable to score against the Cardinals’ ace reliever Bruce Sutter in the eighth and ninth innings, and they lost the game 6-3 and the series 4-3.
After defeating the Milwaukee Brewers in the Game 7, St. Louis Cardinals was crowned as the World Series Champion for the ninth time (17 titles since 2009). St. Louis Cardinal’s Darrell Porter was named MVP (Most Valuable Person).