With a 12-win game streak, Brewers give their fans something else to cheer about — free burgers

New York Times

4 days ago

It's grilling season in Milwaukee.
The hottest team in baseball now has the happiest fans, as the Milwaukee Brewers extended their win streak to 12 games on Wednesday and unlocked a longstanding and elusive free-burger giveaway from local restaurant chain George Webb. The Brewers swept the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 12-5 win, setting up a chance to tie their club-record win streak on Friday in Cincinnati.
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It was the second time in a month that the popular George Webb promotion — free burgers if the Brewers win 12 games in a row — was threatened by an 11-game win streak. This time, it cashed. The burger giveaway has been activated just three times in the more than 75 years since it was introduced; the Brewers' previous 12-game win streaks were in 1987 and 2018.
'George Webb is heating up the grill,' read a note on the restaurant chain's website before the game. 'Just in case.'
The Brewers' road to 12 consecutive wins has included sweeps of the Washington Nationals, Atlanta Braves, New York Mets and the Pirates. After destroying Cy Young candidate Paul Skenes on Tuesday, Milwaukee made quick work of starter Mitch Keller in the series finale, scoring two runs in the third inning and four in the fourth to chase the 2023 All-Star early. It was just the second time Keller allowed more than three runs in any of his past 12 starts.
After the Brewers pushed their lead to six runs in the fourth inning, Brewers broadcaster Jeff Levering turned to his broadcast partner, Bill 'Rock' Schroeder, and asked, 'You smell something, Rock? Burgers? You smell burgers? Those grills are getting fired up.'
The Pirates immediately halved the deficit, but the Brewers held on as they have all season.
Projected to win 81 games this season, the Brewers already have 76. They are 32 games over .500 and, as of the conclusion of their game Wednesday, eight games up in the NL Central. They proclaim an ego-free clubhouse. They are relentless. They play an appealing brand of baseball. The Brewers lead the National League in batting average and stolen bases, and are second in runs. They haven't had outfielder Jackson Chourio, first baseman Rhys Hoskins or rookie All-Star Jacob Misiorowski in August; they haven't lost once.
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The free-burger promotion began, as the story goes, before Milwaukee even had a major-league team. In the late 1940s, Webb hung a sign at his newly opened diner, George Webb Lunch, that predicted the Milwaukee Brewers — then playing in the Triple-A American Association — would win 17 consecutive games that season. The prediction was reduced to 12 games when the Boston Braves moved to town in 1953, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and along came a promise of free hamburgers.
The Braves came close. They won 11 in a row in June 1956. Webb had 10,000 hamburgers at the ready. Then the Philadelphia Phillies scored twice in the eighth inning for a streak-snapping 4-2 win. 'I would have gladly given them away,' Webb told a reporter at the time. 'The offer still stands. We'll just start over again, and this time with 12,000 hamburgers.'
Webb died the next year. His son, Jim, took over the business and kept the promotion running. All told, the Braves had seven double-digit winning streaks before decamping for Atlanta in 1965, but none reached 12 games. The Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee in 1970 and were renamed the Brewers, making Webb's prediction relevant again. The Brewers had win streaks end at 10 games in 1973, 1978 and 1979. No free burgers yet.
The Brewers couldn't have known upon winning the last three games of the 1986 season that something special was afoot. By then, Jim Webb had sold the restaurant chain. The promotion remained. And why not? It drew widespread attention when the Brewers got hot, and, after nearly 40 years, George Webb's prediction had never been right.
Until 1987.
The Brewers swept the Boston Red Sox to start the season, then swept the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles on the road. That gave Milwaukee 12 consecutive wins dating back to the previous season. But George Webb required all 12 wins to be contained within one calendar year. The Brewers won again the next two days. In the series finale at home against Texas, the Brewers trailed by three runs in the ninth. With one out, Rob Deer smashed a tying three-run homer. With two outs, Dale Sveum hit a two-run walk-off blast.
Finally, it was burger time.
T-shirts were made: 'Brewers 12, George Webb 168,194.' That's how many burgers the diner chain gave away.
The Brewers' 13-game winning streak in April 1987 remains the club record. They didn't have another winning streak threaten the George Webb prediction until 2018, when the Crew ended the season with eight straight wins to steal a division title. They swept the Colorado Rockies in the NLDS to run the streak to 11. More than 44,000 squished into Miller Park for Game 1 of the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, and after the Brewers' 6-5 win, more than 90,000 George Webb burgers and 100,000 free-burger vouchers were handed out.
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The Brewers won 11 games in a row in 2021 before a 2-0 loss to Pittsburgh.
They won 11 games in a row this July before a 1-0 loss to Seattle.
This week, the Brewers again pushed a winning streak to 11 games by Skenes in a 14-0 rout on Tuesday. For all the buzz percolating in the fanbase, little about the free-burger promotion had reached the clubhouse.
When a Journal Sentinel reporter asked Misiorowski about George Webb, the rookie replied, 'Is it like that grill that you squish the sides together?' (No, that's the George Foreman grill.)
Starter Brandon Woodruff drives past a George Webb diner on his way to work. He has yet to go inside. 'But I'll tell you what,' Woodruff said, 'if we pull it off, I want one of those burgers.'
Woodruff did his part. He pitched out of trouble early and turned in four scoreless innings before leaving the baseball to the Brewers bullpen.
There are all sorts of promotions across professional sports to give fans a collective goal — usually the pursuit of a taco, a chicken sandwich or, in Milwaukee, a burger. Some are obvious marketing gimmicks with seemingly unattainable requirements. In 2007, a New England furniture store offered to refund the price of items bought in April if the Red Sox won the World Series. (They won the World Series.) After the 2016 Cleveland Indians won a then-club-record 14 games, a local window company promised that if Cleveland had a 15-game winning streak in 2017, all work done in July would be free. (They won 22 in a row.)
But few promotions have persisted as long as the George Webb's Brewers burger giveaway.
For those not in the proximity of a participating diners when the free burgers come off the grill, a T-shirt emblazoned with Webb's Brewers prediction is available online for $23.99, or roughly the price of three cheeseburger combo meals at a George Webb restaurant.
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