Four teams are left, and the rooting guide isn't complicated. The Dodgers are the defending back-to-back World Series champions. Everybody else in this bracket is some flavor of starving. If you need a flowchart to figure out where your heart goes, you don't have one.
Look at the field. Cleveland's last World Series title came in 1948, which is to say most people alive today have never watched the Guardians win one. Milwaukee has never won it. Tampa Bay hasn't either. Then there's Los Angeles, fresh off back-to-back parades, lined up for a third while the rest of the sport chews on decades of nothing.
So root against the Dodgers. Loudly, with your whole chest. There's nothing mean-spirited about wanting a team that just won two straight to sit one out. It's the basic appetite that makes October worth watching. A sport where the Dodgers just keep collecting rings turns into a formality.
The American League side already guarantees a drought story. Guardians vs. Rays means a team that hasn't won since Truman was president, or a team that has never won at all, reaches the World Series no matter what. That half of the bracket can't disappoint you.
Which leaves the National League as the only place the fun can die. The NLCS is Dodgers vs. Brewers, and it starts Sunday. Milwaukee is the one thing standing between a guaranteed feel-good World Series and a Dodgers coronation most of the country will watch through its fingers. That makes the Brewers the most important team in baseball this week, whether Wisconsin wants the pressure or not. Beat Los Angeles, and whatever comes out of the AL gives the sport a champion it can actually celebrate.
These aren't the same players who suffered since 1948, and reducing a roster to a drought counter is a little silly. The guys in Cleveland's clubhouse weren't alive for most of that wait. People are rooting against a franchise that hoards the trophy while everyone else takes a ticket and waits. The monopoly is the problem.
Plenty of people have already decided the Dodgers win regardless. Root anyway. The whole reason you watch is the chance the heavy favorite gets dragged down. Pull for Milwaukee and whoever survives the AL, and pull against the Dodgers. Rooting for the Dodgers right now is rooting for the house. The house doesn't need you.
