LOS ANGELES – At his lowest point, Jake Bauers didn’t just want to get away from baseball. I wanted to go so far that I needed a plane or a cruise ship. “He wanted to move to Costa Rica,” said Lauren Bauers, Jake’s high school sweetheart turned wife and mother of his two children. “True story,” Jake said. “It was, ‘Let’s go to Costa Rica, let’s go to Greece. Let’s get away from this for a while,'” Bauers added, laughing. “But I don’t think that’s gotten past the point of being a casual comment.” “It was one of those random comments when you’re ebbing and flowing, and he was down,” Lauren said. “But I’m ready to do whatever he wants. We’re a team.” And so they were together at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday, Lauren in the stands and Jake in the batter’s box for another epic at-bat against a Dodgers ace in the Brewers’ 6-2 victory over the Dodgers in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series. The 31-year-old was a fitting hero for a team that is one win away from its first World Series in 44 years because he is greater than the sum of his many different parts. After hitting a 12-pitch home run against the Braves in August, and after his 12-pitch walk swung Game 2 of the National League Championship Series in favor of the Brewers, Bauers was at it again in the seventh inning of Game 3, when he hit a go-ahead two-run homer on the 11th pitch of a battle with Dodgers starter Blake Snell. Talk about proper heroes. The hitter before Bauers was Andrew Vaughn, the part-time first baseman who hit .306 this season, but had to wait patiently for him to play, but never complained. He drew a walk that broke Snell’s streak of consecutive batters retired at 14. And the batter after Bauers was Garrett Mitchell, the former first-round draft pick who played more games this season than his first four injury-plagued seasons combined, but persevered. He followed Bauers’ home run with a solo home run for a 4-2 lead, representing a surprising turn of events after the Dodgers rallied for their first two runs of the night in the bottom of the sixth. Bauers struck a first blow before starting the battle. He looked two balls in a row out of the zone and then was fouled on a changeup. With two strikes, he fouled off a slider and a curveball. After the 3-ball, he fouled off a four-seam fastball, another changeup and another slider. Whatever Snell threw at him, Bauers rejected it. They both have history. They were once teammates in the Rays system. “I’ve seen all the ups and downs he’s been through and it’s been a lot,” Snell said. “So to go through this right now, he’s earned it. I take my hat off to him. I mean, what an at-bat. I threw everything I had at it.” On the eleventh pitch, Snell chose the fastball. He didn’t want to throw it in half. Bauers didn’t miss it, sending his first home run of this postseason a Statcast-projected 412 feet into the right field stands. It was the sixth home run on the 11th pitch of an at-bat or later in the postseason since pitch count tracking began in 1988. And it made Bauers the second player with more than 11 plate appearances in consecutive games within a postseason. The first was the Cubs’ Aramis Ramirez, who singled and struck out in epic at-bats in Games 4 and 5 of the 2003 National League Championship Series. “There was probably a moment where I thought, ‘Oh, you’re at it again,’” Bauers said. “I was looking for a fastball and I didn’t want to miss it. I said I’d adjust to anything else, but if you get a fastball, don’t miss it.” And the Brewers weren’t done. When Mitchell followed with another home run to knock Snell out of the game, the Brewers posted their third consecutive postseason home run streak in franchise history. Bauers and Sal Frelick were the most recent duo in Game 3 of the 2024 NL Wild Card Series, and Orlando Arcia and Keon Broxton did it in Game 3 of the 2018 NLDS. “Electric,” Lauren Bauers said. “That’s what every at-bat has been like this entire postseason: electric. The first two pitches were pretty nerve-wracking, and then by the third or fourth pitch, I was just breathing deeply. “I knew he had it in him.” They met as sophomores at Marina High School in Huntington Beach, California, where Jake remembers sitting behind Lauren in history class and picking on her, “spitballs and the full nine,” he said. Soon they were passing notes. “Then you blink,” Jake said, “and you’re married and have two kids.” Their daughter, Marlee Jane, was born exactly two weeks before the Yankees traded Bauers to the Brewers for a pair of minor leaguers, when Jake was about to turn 28 and had played with San Diego, Tampa Bay, Cleveland, Cincinnati and the Yankees. He hit .199 while playing primarily off the bench in ’24, and the Brewers released him in November rather than take him to arbitration. Bauers thought he had already had enough. “It’s not easy to move from one team to another and still believe in yourself in the way you need to be successful in this game,” he said earlier this week. Lauren heard it but asked him to reconsider. Life circumstances also played a role when Lauren became pregnant with the couple’s second child. By then, Jake’s instinct was to continue playing. It was the right decision to stay with Milwaukee. and 2025 in a part-time role while welcoming his son, Brooks Christopher, who was born on August 2, 2026, Jake enjoyed a breakthrough at age 30 when he stopped overthinking and resisted being so hard on himself, playing in a career-high 144 games and leading the Brewers with 26 home runs. Bauers’ 143 wRC+, a good overall measure of offensive production, was seventh best among qualified MLB hitters, ahead of players like Junior Caminero, Elly De La Cruz and Shohei Ohtani. “Everyone’s journey in baseball is unique,” said Christian Yelich. “Everyone has their own experience in the game and a lot of those experiences end up shaping you. You probably don’t realize it at the time, but they’re learning lessons and you come out the other side a little better. Jake certainly has done that in his career.” “You really reach out to people when you talk about the pains,” said Mitchell, who has had many. “It’s not just the good things that happen, but also the adversities you go through. Especially in a game where we fail more than we succeed. It’s great to hear his perspective on things and how it’s led up to this year.” While Bauers was on the foul line before Game 1 of this National League Championship Series, he was about to clean up in a series that could send the Brewers to the World Series. The moment called for some reflection. “To [Lauren] “To do that and for her to allow me the opportunity to come here and move forward and support me in any way she can, it’s been crazy,” he said. “It’s been crazy to see her growth as a woman and a mother. So I was out there listening to the national anthem and I was thinking about her. She was there for me all this time when it wasn’t always easy. I wasn’t always the best husband. I wasn’t always the best father.” He stood his ground. The Brewers did the same. “You have to trust your instinct,” Lauren said. “I think he knew it wasn’t over when he said it was over. It was a ‘half-way’ feeling, not a ‘full gut’ feeling. And that’s why we’re here.”
