Game 2 of Dodgers-Brewers will be filled with former MVP winners

Game 2 of the Dodgers-Brewers wild card series could make history, as the first postseason game in MLB history featuring five former MVP winners.

Clayton Kershaw, the 2014 National League MVP, starts on the mound, adding one to the quartet of former MVP winners we saw in Game 1 — Mookie Betts (2018 American League) and Cody Bellinger (2019 NL) for the Dodgers, Christian Yelich (2018 NL) and Ryan Braun (2011 NL) for the Brewers.

There have been seven previous postseason series and 28 previous postseason games involving five MVP winners, but all of those included at least one MVP from that season. Game 2 of this series might mark the first postseason game with five MVPs from previous years.

That’s if Braun plays, after getting removed in the fourth inning of Game 1 with a mid-back strain.

The last such series was the 1982 ALCS between the Brewers and Angels. All five games featured Don Baylor, Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson, and Fred Lynn, plus that year’s AL MVP Robin Yount.

The last Dodgers postseason game with five MVP winners was Game 1 of the 1963 World Series at Yankee Stadium. That game included both MVPs from that season — Sandy Koufax, who struck out a then-record 15 batters for the Dodgers, and catcher Elston Howard for the Yankees — in addition to Maury Wills (1962 NL), Mickey Mantle (1956-57, 1962 AL), and Roger Maris (1960-61 AL).

Those two teams also produced two five-MVP games in the 1956 World Series. That was the year of Mantle’s first MVP. Don Newcombe, who won both NL MVP and the first (then major league) Cy Young Award that season for Brooklyn, started in Games 2 and 7, joining fellow MVPs Jackie Robinson (1949 NL), Roy Campanella (1951, 1953, 1955 NL) and Yogi Berra (1951, 1954-55 AL).