MILWAUKEE — In the postseason, you can’t hide from the moment. The lights are bright, the crowds are loud, and each pitch could determine the outcome of a team’s season.
When all three of those things happened for the Brewers on Wednesday, the 20-year-old kid with the big smile was there.
“He’s … he’s special,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy, fighting back the emotions, said of outfielder Jackson Chourio following his team’s 5-3 victory over the Mets in Game 2 of their NL wild-card series.
When the Brewers entered spring training, Chourio pressed. Fresh off an $82 million extension — a record for a player with zero major-league experience — the rookie, who was set to become the youngest player in the big leagues, was clearly trying to show the world he deserved it.
Throughout this season, Chourio was quiet, with a calm demeanor. You might’ve even called him shy. But as he rounded the bases not once but twice in Wednesday’s Game 2, he let out all the emotions in his body as his two-homer day saved the Brewers’ season.
The kid from Maracaibo, Venezuela, isn’t shy anymore. He and anyone watching now know that he has arrived.
“I’m ready to put on a show for the big leagues and all the fans who haven’t gotten to see me play,” Chourio told Yahoo Sports back in March.
Fast-forward to today, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. Throughout the season, Chourio has been the Brewers’ spark plug. First the youngest player in baseball, then the youngest player in MLB history to record a 20-20 season, he continued to get better at every turn. How much more could you ask a kid to do?
But after the team’s star outfielder, Christian Yelich, went down due to season-ending back surgery, Chourio seemed to take on an even bigger role. And on Wednesday, with his team’s back against the wall and the season on the line, Chourio took matters into his own hands.
“The pressure is always going to be there,” he said postgame. “So as a player, our job is to control it the best way possible. It’s to go out there and find the moment where we can control it, keep going out there and doing what we do.”
The Brewers’ left fielder started his monster night by crushing a leadoff homer into the Mets’ bullpen, getting Milwaukee on the board in the first inning and setting the tone for his team. The homer made Chourio the fifth-youngest player to hit a home run in the MLB postseason.
The playoffs have a tendency to present big moments for the stars to shine. And late in the game, with Milwaukee facing a 3-2 deficit and an early October elimination, you could feel something special on the horizon. The crowd was buzzing in anticipation, and in the eighth inning, when the Brewers needed some magic, sure enough, Chourio was there.
On a 1-1 count, he drove a hanging cutter from Mets reliever Phil Maton deep to right field to tie the game. The Brewers’ dugout erupted, and as the ball struck the facade of the second deck, Chourio electrified the crowd of 40,000-plus at American Family Field.
That home run made Chourio just the second player in MLB history to have a multi-homer postseason game before his 21st birthday, joining Braves great Andruw Jones, who did so as a 19-year-old. It also made Chourio just the second player in MLB history to hit two game-tying home runs in one postseason game, joining Babe Ruth in Game 4 of the 1928 World Series.
“I think the adrenaline is still getting to me. I think I still feel the adrenaline,” he said after the game. “It was a very special moment for me and one I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”
Offered Mets manager Carlos Mendoza: “The whole time we were going through the situation, we wanted a Maton-Chourio matchup.
“It just didn’t work.”
Two batters later, Garrett Mitchell put a stamp on the game for the Brewers, hitting a two-run shot to help Milwaukee secure the victory and even the series 1-1.
“It starts with [Chourio],” Mitchell said afterward. “It starts with that at-bat he put together.”
As this season went along, there were various moments when things clicked for Chourio. After just starting to find his way eight months ago, he’s becoming exactly the player the organization thought he could be.
“I think you saw it on defense [first],” Murphy said. “He showed some aggression in the outfield, and it was like, ‘Wow.’ … There were some takes [in early June], and all of a sudden I’m like, ‘This kid is getting it.’
“… But the kid came with a big smile. He’s a great human.”
This season, Chourio showed anyone paying attention that he is a star, and now, the postseason’s youngest player — who, fittingly, also caught the game’s final out — is shining when the lights are brightest.
“These are moments that we get to share together, both me personally and the city of Milwaukee,” he said. “So I’m just very happy we get to celebrate these together.”