The two best teams in the National League and the majors are meeting in the NLCS for the second straight season.

Yet, even though Milwaukee has won more regular season games than LA both times and managed a terrific 103-win season this year, this matchup has always felt like a tale of David and Goliath, not an epic clash between two evenly matched armies eager to run head-first into one another. In broad strokes, the ones that build the background to any painting, this is a small market versus the biggest market in the world, a contest that exceeds the confines of the U.S. It’s homegrown talent, carefully scouted and lovingly developed, versus a team of mercenaries cobbled together by the might of endless pockets and the risk tolerance said pockets facilitate. It’s good versus evil, the silent and admirable march of the unsung versus the fanfare, the flash, the confident strides and bright smiles of a collection of stars who know they’re despised for the same reason death is, their inevitability.

I’m not here to fully dispel these narratives, partly because simple storylines are good for getting spectators—myself included—engaged, but also because they do have some truth to them. For example, the Brewers did draft or sign as amateurs more than half of their rotation and everyday lineup, as well as two of their three best relievers, whereas the Dodgers only have two draftees playing everyday roles, Will Smith and Andy Pages. But if Milwaukee is the best front office in baseball, and most would agree with that assessment, the Dodgers are no lower than second or third. Both teams excel at trades and have tremendously well-oiled and synced acquisition and development programs; both teams build endless collections of talent in their farm system. The main difference, of course, is that while Milwaukee mostly builds around their amateurs, the Dodgers tend to use their prospects as trade assets.

Neither of these courses of action has to be more noble than the other, but I’d be a lying fool if I didn’t acknowledge that as far as the public is concerned, this series has a good guy and a bad guy, a courageous babyface and a dastardly heel. And what’s more, the babyface is desperate for revenge, for a chance to finally lay his demons to rest. Both times he’s gotten to this point over the last decade, 2018 and 2025, the Big Evil has stood in his way. In 2018, the struggle was fierce and the heartbreak unthinkable; in 2025, it wasn’t even a battle, just a one-sided thrashing, yet somehow even more disheartening. The Bad Guy is trying to make a stepping stone of the underdogs on his way to three in a row. One way or another, the result of this series will leave no one, neutral or not, indifferent.

The bell is about to ring. Baseball’s civil war is here. Let the games begin.