Baseball karma arrived Saturday night for us smug San Diegans who tease friends or family back east about our glorious weather.<\/p>\n
Payback came via Milwaukee\u2019s roofed baseball park that was built to cope with Wisconsin\u2019s less-forgiving climate.<\/p>\n
Against astronomical odds, the roof denied Padres slugger\/San Diego State alum Ty France a potential go-ahead home run in the ninth inning of Saturday\u2019s playoff series opener.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s moonshot struck a roof cable that locals say had never been hit. The ball angled downward into the glove of Brewers left fielder Jackson Chourio on the warning track\u2019s front edge, near the corner. It went for the second out, and when Jackson Merrill\u2019s liner sailed into the right fielder\u2019s glove, the Brewers and some 42,000 fans celebrated a 3-2 win in Game 1 in the best-of-5 National League Division Series.<\/p>\n
Sunday brought a fresh canvas:<\/p>\n
A mid-afternoon time slot, an open roof, and a Padres ace on the mound.<\/p>\n
Could the Padres dig themselves out of the karmic hole?<\/p>\n
It appeared they would when France drove in a pair of runs<\/a>\u00a0and Michael King retired his first 14 batters<\/a>, and the team took a 3-1 lead into the home seventh inning.<\/p>\n But they lost 4-3<\/a>, giving the Padres much to ponder on the flight home for Game 3, which comes Tuesday.<\/p>\n This was the franchise\u2019s most excruciating postseason defeat, except for the 1998 World Series opener at Yankee Stadium.<\/p>\n Despite holding a lead going into every Brewers at-bat, the Padres failed to even the series.<\/p>\n Offensively, the Padres underachieved for the second day in a row.<\/p>\n Because the offense failed to put more runs on a day when the Brewers handed them four extra outs via three errors and a pitcher not covering first base, Padres manager Craig Stammen asked Mason Miller to get his first six-out save since 2024, when the closer was with the Athletics.<\/p>\n Miller, who was on three days\u2019 rest, threw a scoreless eighth to preserve the 3-2 lead.<\/p>\n He retired the first hitter of the ninth before going walk, flyout, walk, walk to bring up 22-year-old emerging star Jackson Chourio.<\/p>\n Miller still had a hot fastball, although his 34 pitches had matched his season high.<\/p>\n Chourio, signed out of Venezuela at age 16, is Milwaukee\u2019s best fastball hitter but has evolved into a very good hitter, period. In Game 1, the righty pounded a 420-foot home run off a slider from lefty Robbie Ray<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s starting to realize how he plays the game,\u201d Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. \u201cAs talented as he is, he\u2019s still learning the game.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller began Chourio with four fastballs, each one hitting triple digits.<\/p>\n Chourio got off an ominous swing on the fourth one, a 1-2 pitch that he fouled back.<\/p>\n Miller answered with a nose-diving slider over the plate that, in many other duels, would\u2019ve induced a flailing third strike.<\/p>\n Chourio let it pass under his knees.<\/p>\n When Miller brought another fastball \u2014 out over the plate, belt-high, clocked at 101.3-mph \u2014 Chourio hammered it to center field to win it, 4-3.<\/p>\n