Two years ago Jake Bauers told his agent he was retiring. The plan was that his wife would go back to teaching and he would stay home with their kid. Three days later she told him she was pregnant, so he went back to work instead. For the insurance. Tonight he hit the go ahead home run in the National League Championship Series. Here is the whole thing. He is from Newport Beach, California, and he went to Marina High School in Huntington Beach. San Diego took him in the 7th round. Then seven organizations in 11 years. He hit for the cycle with Cleveland once. He has also been traded four times, sent down, taken off a 40 man roster and signed to three different minor league deals. He is a career .224 hitter. Two years ago he hit .199 with 118 strikeouts, and he decided that was enough. He figured the last good swing of his career was a home run he hit in a wild card game that October. He was fine with that being the end of it. Here is how he describes what happened next. "She tells me she's pregnant." And then this. "Obviously, she wasn't going back to work, so we decided I was going to keep playing." And the reason, in four words. "We needed health insurance." So he did not retire. Milwaukee took him off the roster that November anyway. He went into free agency, re-signed a minor league deal in January, and made the team out of spring training. This year he hit .266 with 26 home runs and 86 RBI and an .873 OPS. He is 31 years old and it is the best season of his life by a wide margin. In game 2 of this series he fouled off pitch after pitch against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 12 of them in one at bat. Here is what he said about that. "I decided that he wasn't going to get me." And here is what he said about his wife a few days ago. "We have two kids, so she's holding it down at home by herself a lot of the time, which is a lot." And this. "She stuck by me this whole time when it wasn't always easy." And then he said this about himself. "I wasn't always the best husband. I wasn't always the best father." Here is the honest part. He is still a .224 hitter for his career and one great season does not erase 11 years of being almost good enough. He had not homered once in this postseason before tonight. But the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6 to 2 and they are up three games to none. A man quit baseball two years ago. His wife got pregnant, they needed the insurance, and he went back to work. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap