If The Milwaukee Brewers Win the 2020 World Series: Legit or Asterisk?

Looks like summer won’t be so boring after all. Brewers baseball is going to be back.

Finally, after all the back and forth chaos between owners and the Players Union, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred mandated a July 1st start of “Spring Training” and the Brewers season is set to kick off either July 23rd or July 24th.

That being said, with only 60 games in the season, if the Milwaukee Brewers were to go all the way this year and secure a World Series win, can it be considered it a legitimate win? Or do we put an asterisk next to “2020 World Series Champions”?

We decided to post a poll on our Twitter page, and according to Brewers fans, it looks like if the Crew were to finally claim a World Series win, it would be legitimate. 76% of the 1,200 votes cast said the win would be legitimate.

Why Put An Asterisk?

Many feel that with the season only being 60 games, in comparison to a 162 regular game season, it wouldn’t really be a ‘legit’ World Series win for whichever team may claim that title at the end of the season. But, looking at the history of the usage of the asterisks, it’s more so used when teams or individual athletes cheated their way to the top. So, even if we were to just play 60 games, that’s still 60 games of baseball that the team worked hard for and played well enough to win the World Series, correct?

Last year, the eventual World Series champion Washington Nationals got off to a 19-31 start to the season. In a 60 game season, they wouldn’t have even come close to the playoffs. The reason baseball plays 162 games is to accurately determine the best overall team instead of allowing one hot stretch to determine the champion.

It can be argued though, that with the shortened season, it gives more pressure for the athletes to perform their best and give 110% in order to even get to the World Series. It’ll be a much different pace from what baseball fans are used to.

Every team is in the same situation, and every team will play 60 games. The playoffs are the same as they have been and the rules of the game are the same for everyone. No one is playing under different rules than another team.

To me, if the Brewers were to win the 2020 World Series, I would consider it a legitimate win. After all the chaos that these players have gone through with the owners and trying to figure out the season and handling the pandemic, it’ll be a title that is well deserved and earned. They will have played as many games as possible and defeated everyone they played in the playoffs. This year has been torturous, and in all honesty, whoever wins the World Series should be considered a legit champion.

In any of the previous strike-shortened seasons, no one has put an asterisk on the World Series champion. That shouldn’t happen this year with a pandemic-shortened season.