Milwaukee earned this stage the hard way and now the hottest team in the National League gets home-field against baseball’s biggest brand. After outlasting the Cubs in a tense five-game NLDS, the Brewers welcome the Dodgers to American Family Field on Monday night, setting up a clash of styles and histories that already feels loud before the first pitch. The opener is scheduled for 8:08 p.m. ET, a prime-time slot that suits a series built for spotlight moments and second-screen debates.
The storyline at the top is simple enough. Milwaukee surged through late summer with elite run prevention and an edge that travels. Los Angeles counters with star power and a lineup that tends to make any ballpark look small when it strings quality at-bats together. They know each other well, too. The regular season tilted toward the Brewers, and that gives this matchup a little extra bite for a Dodgers club that still expects October to end in a parade. For fans, it adds stakes to every adjustment from each dugout, because both managers will spend this week solving the other side’s best trick.
The calendar favors the team that can land a punch early. Games 1 and 2 are in Milwaukee on Monday and Tuesday. The series shifts to Los Angeles for Games 3 and 4 on Thursday and Friday, with a Game 5 on Saturday if needed. Should we go the distance, Games 6 and 7 return to Wisconsin on Monday and Tuesday. It is the familiar 2-3-2 format, but October travel still tests pitching depth and bench flexibility. Rest matters, bullpen usage matters more, and the club that wins the sixth and seventh innings usually wins the night.
If you watch the first two games closely, keep an eye on pace and traffic. Milwaukee’s blueprint is to control counts, steal the odd base, and turn every hard grounder into two outs behind a locked-in infield. The Dodgers will try to stretch opposing starters and make a long series feel short by stacking tough plate appearances. That kind of tug-of-war tends to flip on tiny margins: a missed backdoor cutter with two outs, a nine-pitch walk before a mistake up in the zone, a relay throw that arrives a half-step late. Those are the beats that tilt October, and both teams have lived them enough to know better than to blink.
For Canadian viewers the “how to watch” piece is refreshingly straightforward. Game 1 starts at 7:08 p.m. in Winnipeg and 9:08 p.m. in the Atlantic provinces, with TBS carrying the U.S. broadcast. In Canada, national rightsholders are Sportsnet in English and RDS/TVA in French, with streaming via Sportsnet+ for authenticated subscribers. If you prefer to stream the TBS feed, HBO Max carries the NLCS in the U.S.; availability and blackout rules depend on your package when you’re north of the border, so check your provider before first pitch.
This series also offers a neat bit of symmetry. The franchises met in a seven-game classic in 2018, when Los Angeles survived a raucous Miller Park to punch its World Series ticket. Seven years later the names have changed, the ballpark’s name has changed, but the stakes are familiar. Milwaukee’s core understands the weight of this window and plays like it. Los Angeles, back in the NLCS for the second straight year, carries the kind of expectation that can be heavy or clarifying depending on the inning and the situation. That tension is why this matchup reads like great television.
So set your screens, settle in, and let the noise of October do what it does. If Milwaukee’s run prevention keeps squeezing, if the Dodgers’ stars find their big-swing timing, if one bullpen blinks on the wrong night, the NL pennant may come down to a single at-bat that turns a loud building quiet. Either way, Monday night starts a best-of-seven that feels like it could carry a season’s worth of arguments in every half-inning. That is exactly how the Championship Series should feel.
