How Crew's Murphy is 'the straw that stirs our drink'

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy’s Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MILWAUKEE -- Everyone who has crossed his path in baseball has a favorite Pat Murphy story to tell. Christian Yelich’s tale dates back to the beginning of his Milwaukee tenure, when Eric Thames took a mighty cut and felt his bat shatter into a million pieces for an easy out.

Thames walked back to the dugout in a rage with only the handle of the bat remaining in his hand. Yelich happened to be standing right next to Murphy as Thames approached.

“Hey Eric!” Murphy eagerly called out. “Did ya break it?”

Thames’ fury melted away and he broke into laughter at the ridiculousness of the question.

It was just the thing to crack the tension.

The trick for Murphy will be striking the right tone now that he’s in charge of the Brewers’ dugout. The team was finalizing plans Tuesday morning to promote the 64-year-old to manager after eight seasons as Craig Counsell’s top lieutenant.

When finalized, Murphy's hiring will cap a weeklong search for the 20th manager in franchise history, with Rickie Weeks expected to join the Major League staff and the rest of Milwaukee’s coaches returning. It will be Murphy’s first chance to manage full time since he was interim skipper for the Padres in 2015, before he moved to Milwaukee to join Counsell’s staff -- a full-circle moment as Murphy coached Counsell at Notre Dame in the early 1990s.

“The wisdom he’s imparted on our staff is something to behold,” Brewers associate pitching, catching and strategy coach Walker McKinven said in June, when MLB.com asked around about Murphy before he managed a Brewers win over the Pirates while Counsell attended his son Jack’s high school graduation. “Me, personally, I don’t think I even viewed myself as a coach eight years ago, and little by little, [Murphy] inspired me that I could.

“He’s kind of the straw that stirs our drink. He’s a jokester 95 percent of the time when he talks to you guys [reporters] or to players. But when he wants to get serious, his words mean something to players.”

The 95 percent tends to be memorable. You may have also heard the story from 2020, when Murphy was forced to watch from afar after suffering a heart attack in the leadup to MLB’s pandemic-shortened season. During his absence, the Brewers picked up 270-pound designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach, and the first time they crossed paths in person, Murphy exclaimed, “How did I have a heart attack and you haven't had a heart attack?”

Vogelbach was momentarily stunned. Then, he found it hilarious.

And he wasn’t the only Brewers big man to traverse that range of emotion.

“I’ve never had a guy break me down but still give me compliments,” first baseman Rowdy Tellez said. “I was struggling one day and I got into the dugout, and he goes, ‘Hey man, it’s not your fault.'”

Tellez expected words of encouragement to follow.

Instead, Murphy looked Tellez right in the eye and deadpanned, “You’re just not that good.”

Tellez loved it. For a certain brand of ballplayer, trash talking is part of the fun. Forever after, whenever they shook hands, Murphy looked at Tellez and said in a warm tone, “Hey, it’s not your fault. Just do your best.”

“He keeps it lighthearted, which you need in a game that has so many ups and downs in a season,” Yelich said. “But he honestly, really knows players and knows the game of baseball. And you can’t fool him. He sees through all of the bull. He knows what winning players look like and what they don’t.”

For emphasis, Yelich added, “He sees everything.”

Murphy makes that clear by doling out “checks” when anyone steps out of line. They can be for something as serious as lollygagging during a pregame drill or as benign as lingering too long in a bathroom mirror. Check. Tell a story that includes too much name-dropping? That’s a check. Complain about the towels in whatever luxury hotel the team happens to inhabit that weekend? That’s a serious check.

“He watches everything and he knows everything going on,” Yelich said. “You might not think he knows it, but he does. Through all the lightheartedness and the jokes, he’s a really smart baseball mind.”