A praying mantis kept landing on Jackson Chourio during Game 3 of the NLCS against the Dodgers. Yahoo Sports described the Brewers outfielder's encounter as "hilarious" and said the insect "refuses to leave" him alone. MLB.com's Scott Chiusano headlined the story as "the one thing that bugs Brewers star." That headline puts the mantis on Chourio's shoulder.
The feed summaries say little beyond that. Yahoo says the cameras caught "the entire moment." A r/baseball highlight post says Chourio tried to brush the mantis off and couldn't get rid of his "new companion." A second post on the same subreddit says he "befriended" it. Those two posts disagree on tone, with one framing it as an annoyance and the other as a friendship. None of the material we have says where on the field it happened, which inning it was, or whether the mantis ever left. We also have no quote from Chourio, so we won't guess at how he took it.
The game itself is in our archive. Game 3 was played Oct. 14 at Dodger Stadium, and Milwaukee won 6-2. The Brewers scored one run in the first inning, then none through the sixth. Los Angeles got two runs in the sixth. Milwaukee scored three in the seventh, one in the eighth and one in the ninth. Chourio went 1-for-5 with a home run and an RBI. The Brewers hit three homers as a team, and the Dodgers left 19 runners on base. Chourio finished with no strikeouts.
The win was the Brewers' third straight in the series, following a 2-1 win on Oct. 11 and a 7-4 win on Oct. 12, both at Milwaukee. That puts Milwaukee on a five-game winning streak. The club went 103-59 and won the NL Central.
Chourio's regular season was solid. He hit .291 with an .838 OPS, 25 home runs and 75 RBI over 127 games, with 152 hits. Our box score lists his season average at .200 going into Game 3, so his home run came in a small postseason sample.
Thu, Oct 15, 8:00 PM ET
The Brewers return to Dodger Stadium on Thursday, Oct. 15, for Game 4, with another game there on Oct. 16. Whether the mantis comes back isn't something any of the reporting can tell us.
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