Brewers manager Murphy reflects on his 38-year baseball conversation with Counsell
Before beating the Cubs 1-0 in a rain-delayed NL Central battle at Wrigley Field, Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy recalled the time he took a recruiting visit to County Stadium.
The year was likely 1988 and Murphy was just beginning his tenure as head coach at Notre Dame. Associate athletic director Roger Valdiserri had a lead on an available high school talent.
“(Valdiserri) came to me and said, 'There's a kid in Wisconsin whose dad (John) was a captain here and helped coach here. His son wants to come to Notre Dame,'” Murphy recalled. “He's doing these workouts at Milwaukee County Stadium with Sal Bando Jr. You should probably go up there and look at him.'”
So Murphy made the drive from South Bend, watched Counsell work out on the Brewers’ home field and offered a partial scholarship. John Counsell worked in the Brewers’ front office at the time as director of community relations. Sal Bando Jr. wasn't Notre Dame material, apparently.
“I had a thousand dollar recruiting budget and we had, not two scholarships to give out; we had two scholarships for the whole program,” Murphy said. “So I gave him a few bucks and he made me look good.
“I tell everybody I out-recruited Wisconsin for him. Wisconsin didn't have a baseball team anymore.”
According to Murphy, Counsell started in left field as a freshman, moved to shortstop as a sophomore, then started to blossom as a junior and senior. Notre Dame made the NCAA Tournament twice during Counsell's career, which lasted from 1989-92.
Counsell was drafted by Colorado and started working his way to the majors. Murphy moved on to coach at Arizona State in 1995. But the relationship between the two was just beginning.
Beginning in 2016, Counsell's second season managing Milwaukee, he brought in Murphy to be his bench coach. The tandem worked together through the Brewers' most successful era until this year, when Counsell left for the Cubs and Murphy was hired as his replacement.
In an interesting twist, had the Brewers beat the Cubs on Monday, Murphy would have tied George Bamberger for the second-best 100-game start by a manager in franchise history. Harvey Kuenn is No. 1.
Murphy was asked what made the pairing with Counsell so successful.
“I think he's really good,” Murphy said. “He was the one that wasn't supposed to know anything about coaching He was magnificent at it, that's all there was to it. He was a great decision-maker.”
Back when they were player-coach in South Bend, did Murphy think Counsell was a future manager?
“No, I thought he'd be in finance somewhere,” Murphy said. “I was tough on him at Notre Dame; very, very tough on him. But then we grew into — I don't know if it was a mutual respect. I started to like him anyways. I don't know that he liked me.
“We just always kept in touch, kept our baseball conversation going. It's interesting, people ask me about 38 years of a friendship. Couns referred to it as 38 years of a baseball conversation. That's really all that it's been. We've probably talked about anything else twice. It's been great.”
Once the game began after an 84-minute delay, the Cubs were once again locked in a low-scoring struggle. Starter Jameson Taillon threw 7 scoreless innings, allowing just 2 hits. When he came back out for the 8th, Taillon gave up a pair of singles, then Brice Turang's RBI single off Julian Merryweather produced the only run of the game.
“Honestly, I didn’t feel my best, but that’s kind of been a common theme this year,” Taillon said. “Just find a way to get it done and find a way to get creative with the pitch mix and get contact kind of on my terms on my pitches in my good areas. Fired up I could do that for the team.”
The Cubs finished with 7 hits and loaded the bases in the second and eighth innings, but came up empty. Dansby Swanson led off the ninth with a single, then didn’t get past second base. The Cubs stopped a Brewers scoring chance in the sixth when Christopher Morel fielded a sharp ground ball at third and cut down Garrett Mitchell at the plate.