10/16/2026
Garrett Mitchell hit the home run that sent the Milwaukee Brewers to the World Series.
Their first one in 44 years.
He hit it with an insulin pump in his back left pocket.
Here is the whole thing.
It was a solo home run in the sixth off Tanner Scott. It put Milwaukee ahead 5 to 4 and they did not give the lead back.
Final was 6 to 4. Four straight over the Los Angeles Dodgers. The same team that swept them out of this round last year.
Now here is what is in that pocket.
Mitchell has type 1 diabetes. He was diagnosed in the third grade.
He told his mother he did not feel well. He was going to the bathroom about once an hour and his stomach hurt.
Shannon Van D**e had her son's blood sugar tested. A healthy number is around 80. The meter would not give her a number at all. It just read HIGH.
The real figure was over 600.
"I remember my heart dropping, being afraid, and not knowing what to do or what our future looked like."
He got the pump at 10. She started setting an alarm for 2 or 3 in the morning to test him while he slept.
He kept playing. He carried a bag everywhere with snacks, insulin and sugar in it.
Here is what it cost him.
Coming out of Orange Lutheran High School in California, scouts had him going in the first three rounds.
He went in the 14th.
His coach at UCLA, John Savage, said the diabetes hurt his draft value. There were, in his words, lingering questions about it.
His agent Scott Boras later said that without the condition, Mitchell could have been a top 5 pick.
So he turned the Oakland Athletics down and went to UCLA.
He hit .327 there. He hit 15 triples, the second most in the history of that program.
Milwaukee took him 20th overall in the first round and signed him for 3.2 million dollars.
"My hands were shaking."
Now here is the part that tells you what this still costs him.
Last month, Milwaukee pulled him out of a game in the middle of the afternoon. He was not injured.
His manager Pat Murphy explained it afterward.
"We took him out precautionary. He had high blood sugar."
Murphy said it happens a lot going from a night game to a day game, and that the team keeps working on it.
That was about a month ago.
Now the honest part. He is not the best player on this team and this is not the only reason Milwaukee is going. They got here on pitching and on a lineup that would not go away.
But the man who fell 11 rounds because of what is in his pocket hit the home run that put them in front for good.
His mother once described it like this.
"You will notice it in his back left pocket. It never leaves his body, even when he's playing."
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