It's time for Milwaukee to party like it's 1982.

On Friday, for the first time in 44 years, the Milwaukee Brewers will play in the World Series. Back then, the club's search for its first-ever pennant didn't last too long -- the Brewers won the American League just 12 years after starting play in Milwaukee. (The Brewers moved to the National League in 1998.) But after a seven-game series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, a drought in the quest to make it back to the sport's final stage ensued.

Milwaukee has emerged as one of Major League Baseball's most consistent organizations in recent years. The Brewers have won five of the last six National League Central titles, and haven't dipped below 85 wins in a full season since 2016. However, they weren't able to win out over the rest of the NL's best come postseason time.

Until this year.

The Brewers stormed through the National League's playoff bracket in dominant fashion, dispatching the San Diego Padres three games to one before sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers, a fittingly impressive run for a team that boasted the best regular-season record in the majors.

As a result, World Series baseball is back on the Wisconsin shores of Lake Michigan for the first time in nearly four and a half decades. Unsurprisingly, things have changed quite a bit around baseball since the Brewers last played in the Fall Classic.

Here's a look at what baseball and the other major U.S. sports looked like back in 1982.

Yount, Thomas and more lead the way for 'Harvey's Wallbangers'

The 1982 edition of the Brewers came with a memorable nickname: Harvey's Wallbangers, a play off a popular cocktail referencing the name of Brewers manager Harvey Kuenn and the squad's power-hitting bona fides. Kuenn didn't become manager until midseason, taking over in an interim capacity after Buck Rodgers was dismissed with the team sitting at .500 two months into the season. Kuenn got the team into second gear, and Milwaukee would win the AL East on the season's final day.

The key ingredient in the Brewers' surge? Home runs. Milwaukee clobbered 216 that season, 30 more than the next closest team. Among the team's leaders were Gorman Thomas (39), Ben Oglivie (34) and Cecil Cooper (32), with a trio of future Hall of Famers right behind in Robin Yount (29), Ted Simmons (23) and Paul Molitor (19). 1982 was a particularly stellar year for Yount, who won two of his career MVP awards and led the league in hits and slugging percentage.

Other league leaders

While Yount took home the American League's Most Valuable Player honors, the National League's award went to Dale Murphy of the Atlanta Braves. Murphy clubbed 36 home runs, led the NL in runs batted in and added a Gold Glove in the field for good measure -- and he'd win the award again in 1983, becoming just the ninth player to win the award back to back.

On the mound, in the NL, 37-year-old Steve Carlton delivered the final of his four Cy Young-winning seasons, recording a major-league-best 23 wins and 286 strikeouts on a MLB-high 295⅔ total innings pitched. On the American League side, another Brewer came home with high honors, as Pete Vuckovich won the league's Cy Young, amassing an impressive 18-6 record.

Clubs and alignment younger fans may not recognize

Did the earlier reference to the Brewers being in the American League throw you off? Well, there's plenty more where that came from. Major League Baseball in 1982 did not exactly mirror the sport we see today. Instead of three divisions of five teams per league, it was two divisions of seven in the American League ... and two divisions of six in the National League. Alignment accordingly was wacky -- the Detroit Tigers were in the AL East with the Brewers for instance, while the 1982 National League West winner was ... the not-particularly-western Atlanta Braves.

The teams weren't a one-to-one match to the modern day, either. The California Angels won the AL West that season, pre-dating future name changes to the Anaheim Angels, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Los Angeles Angels. Meanwhile in the NL East, the Montreal Expos were alive and well, with the club's eventual relocation to Washington, D.C., still decades away.

Around the rest of the sporting world

While the Cardinals took the 1982 World Series home to St. Louis, the rest of the 1982-83 sports calendar would belong to the northeast in other major American sports.

Washington would be the first northeastern city to grab a title in the ensuing months, as its dominant NFL squad steamrolled the league to a 12-1 record and a Super Bowl crown in January 1983. New York was next in May, with the New York Islanders powering their way to a Stanley Cup Final sweep of the Edmonton Oilers, before the title luck headed back down I-95 to Philadelphia for the NBA Finals just days later -- the 76ers swept the Los Angeles Lakers in that year's championship series.