Di Dalam Evolusi Pat Murphy, Seperti Diceritakan Mantan Pemain: 'Dia Akan Menciptakan Kekacauan'

Before Andre Ethier became a two-time All-Star outfielder and built a productive 12-year big-league career in Los Angeles, he was known by Pat Murphy as “Johnny Junior College” at Arizona State.

The quirks and idiosyncrasies that have come to define Murphy, the man who earlier this year pulled a pancake out of his pocket in the middle of an in-game interview, existed long before he took over in Milwaukee last season and became the first Brewers skipper to be named Manager of the Year.

Murphy brings a singular style, an eccentric personality — and plenty of nicknames, a tradition that carries on now. 

Brice Turang, the Brewers’ leader in wins above replacement, became known early on as “Slim,” as a reference to Eminem. Milwaukee’s All-Star reliever, 6-foot-8-inch Trevor Megill? That’s “Clifford.” This year, Murphy referred to Cubs standout Pete Crow-Armstrong as “the blue-haired kid.” 

That one, at least, made sense. Other references aren’t always so obvious.

“You have to marinate with it a little bit, you know what I mean?” Murphy once explained. “You don’t ask questions, you just kind of try to figure it out. You just sit with it, like you’re in a bath.”

‘Johnny Junior College’

Murphy’s methods go back decades, to his more fiery and contentious days as a Division-I college coach.

Ethier’s story is one of many. The outfielder was recruited by Murphy to Arizona State in 2000, but after playing poorly that fall, he was told by Murphy he could either redshirt without the guarantee of a roster spot the following season or he could go the junior college route. After a conversation with his parents over Thanksgiving break, Ethier took the latter option. 

“He doesn’t communicate or say a word to me at all the entire time,” Ethier recalled of Murphy. “I go out and have a great year at junior college, I get assigned to go play summer ball in New England Collegiate League. I’m playing there for a month and a half, still no word. All of a sudden one day I get a phone call, ‘Hey, would you like to come back and play?’”

When Ethier returned to campus, a new nickname awaited him during team introductions. 

“‘Oh, we’ve got this new kid … or, it’s not a new kid, it’s ‘Johnny Junior College’ over there who wasn’t good enough to play here last year, so he’s coming back this year to see if he’s good enough to play here this year,’” Ethier recalled Murphy saying. “Calls me out in front of the team and proceeds to call me ‘Johnny Junior College’ the entire fall of my sophomore semester while I’m out there.” 

Pat Murphy won four Pac-12 titles and made the College World Series four times at Arizona State. (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

Any embarrassment clearly did not hold him back. Ethier thrived in his return to campus, developing into a second-round pick in the 2003 MLB Draft.

“Facing that adversity as a young kid, kind of getting, in a way, demoted to go have to figure out my game and struggle and dig deep, helped me so much moving forward in my career,” Ethier said.

Similar stories abound. 

Eric Sogard, who struggled early in his Arizona State tenure, became “Soda Boy,” tasked with filling Murphy’s styrofoam cup with Diet Dr. Pepper. A year later, Sogard hit .353 and became a second-round pick.

Willie Bloomquist, who starred for Murphy in the late 90s at Arizona State and is now the team’s head coach following a 14-year big-league career, remembers Murphy giving pitcher Ryan Bradley the nickname “Big Donkey.” Bradley was a first-round pick in 1997. 

There was a dichotomy to Murphy, who could discipline and ridicule but also lift and inspire. Whether the sobriquets helped or hurt, were endearing or uncomfortable, they came with the territory. This was part of playing for “Murph.” And there’s no denying that the coach, with his atypical approach, tended to get the most out of his players.

“He’s phenomenal at just being able to relate to people and getting them to buy in,” Bloomquist said. “That’s why he’s so good at what he does.”

This year, perhaps more than ever, that skill is on display.

Murphy relishes the fact that this Brewers group, a team that won more games than any in Major League Baseball, is a bunch of “Average Joes” that “nobody’s ever heard of.“

His players understand those are terms of endearment. They know Murphy, an out-sized character on a team full of castoffs and afterthoughts, believes in each of them. That, Brewers infielder Caleb Durbin said, takes a lot of pressure off performing. 

“I think that the word that comes to my mind is just ‘free,’” said Durbin, a 5-foot-7-inch 14th-round pick out of Division-III Washington University in St. Louis. “Playing for Murph allows you to be free because he wants you to be who you are. And there’s a really good combination of, he’s holding you to a certain standard that he’s going to make you play a certain style of baseball that he thinks is the right way, but he also wants you to be yourself and play your game.”

Last year, the Brewers had just traded away ace Corbin Burnes before Murphy’s first spring as manager. A nondescript roster in Milwaukee was projected to win fewer than 80 games. The Brewers defied the odds, winning 93 games and the division, then followed a similar script this season after trading closer Devin Williams and losing starting shortstop Willy Adames to free agency. Milwaukee operated with a bottom-10 payroll, boasted an offense that ranked in the bottom 10 in home runs and did not have a single position player that ranked in the top 25 in fWAR.

And they led the majors with 97 wins. 

“He recruited players that had a chip on their shoulder, had something to prove, were underappreciated, undervalued,” Ethier said. “Maybe the premier places might’ve overlooked you a little bit, but you’re just as good as the next guy, and we’re going to go out there and battle and give them everything they got and play with a workman’s attitude. I think that’s what you’re seeing from this Brewers team.”

‘The favorite stories were the tough ones’

What we see now, Ethier said, is “a drastically toned-down version” of what he experienced from Murphy in the early 2000s at Arizona State. Bloomquist had a similar experience at the school years prior, in the late 1990s. He remembers Murphy as a coach who would do anything to find an edge. 

“If your team’s really good, he’ll create chaos within that environment, do something to make sure nothing is normal,” Bloomquist said. “We used to call it the ‘Irish Chaos’ — Murph’s obviously an Irishman — he feeds off the Irish Chaos … and his players feed off it right with him.”

Looking back, Bloomquist’s favorite stories of Murphy were also the toughest ones.

“You look back and laugh,” Bloomquist said, “but there was a reason for it.”

One time, the Sun Devils were playing sloppily in an intrasquad game. Halfway through, Murphy had seen enough. 

“Drop your s*** and hit the line,” Bloomquist recalled Murphy telling his players. “You guys are going to run to the fence and back until I get tired.’ It was like 45 minutes of back and forth, back and forth.”

Murphy let the team stop momentarily. A team photographer had to speak to the players about their pictures. 

“We think we’re done,” Bloomquist said. “And Murph’s like, ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going? Get your ass back in line and start running again. We’re not done yet.’ It was just, like, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy’s crazy.’ Made us go for another half-hour or so.”

Murphy has since expressed some regret about his intensity during his college coaching years and the way he treated some of his players during that time, including the one who helped guide the path to his current opportunity. He was tough on Craig Counsell when he coached him at Notre Dame, and yet Counsell still thought highly enough of Murphy that he wanted him as his bench coach in Milwaukee, a role that Murphy spent eight years in until Counsell left for Chicago.

“One thing that remains consistent with him is he knows how to motivate, whether it’s through fear at times at ASU, whether it was through just relating to people, which he did a very good job at,” Bloomquist said. “I think that’s what he’s still a master at, understanding what makes people tick to get the most out of them. He’s phenomenal at it.”

Ethier wondered how Murphy’s managing style and personality would translate to a big-league clubhouse, but Milwaukee, a place that has to be selective about the players it goes after due to financial limitations, made for an ideal match. Both Ethier and Bloomquist still stay in touch with Murphy to this day, mostly via text. Last week, Bloomquist sent Murphy a text congratulating him as his team was advancing. 

“I said, ‘Go win the whole f***ing thing,’ and he said, ‘That’s the plan,’” Bloomquist said. “I won’t bother him, I know he’s head down and focused on what he’s doing. I know he’s dedicated to it, and there’s something special there, so I’m hopeful this is this year.”

Murphy has adapted and evolved in his role in Milwaukee. He’s no longer the drill sergeant he was in his college coaching years, but he has kept many of the bits and pieces that always made him a magnetic and enigmatic personality. After decades spent coaching in the college and minor-league ranks, he finally got his big-league opportunity at 65, and he’s running with it, an underdog coaching underdogs.

“It’s refreshing to see someone who can kind of reinvent themselves and still keep some of the characteristics that I know a lot of his former players and people who have been around him love and love him for and transition into running a major league team and doing it successfully,” Ethier said. “You see a lot of teams out there that have a lot of comings and goings with managers and sometimes it just doesn’t feel the right fit, and he’s figured out how to make it the right fit.”

‘They take on Murph’s personality’

Murphy’s media sessions provide insight into his eccentricities and distinctive personality.  

Earlier this year, when the Brewers played in Los Angeles, he was asked about an injured player’s rehab. Murphy began reciting the “rehabilitation” monologue that Red delivered in “The Shawshank Redemption.” In the same 10-minute session, he noted how Brewers outfielder Sal Frelick reminded him of Al Pacino and later, for some reason or another, started making reference to the receivers from quarterback Y.A. Tittle’s early 1960s Giants teams.

Last year in L.A., Murphy spent half of one pregame session discussing the merits of relievers throwing off flat ground in preparation for a game instead of off a slope. He marveled at Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s catch play, comparing the effortlessness of it to Steph Curry getting up shots.

This week, he again made a comparison to the Warriors superstar, this time while raving about Mookie Betts’ seamless move to shortstop and why he thinks Betts is one of baseball’s most underrated stars. 

“It would be like Steph Curry playing forward,” Murphy said, “you know what I mean?”

Pat Murphy was 42-54 in 2015 as the interim manager of the Padres. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

It’s all part of the Murphy experience, which his opposing manager in the NLCS knows well. 

In 2015, Dave Roberts managed one game for the Padres on an interim basis after Bud Black was let go before returning to his role as the team’s bench coach. San Diego called up Murphy from Triple-A to manage the team through the season’s end.

Both skippers have come a long way since then. Months later, Roberts got the top job in Los Angeles and developed into a two-time World Series champion manager. Murphy, meanwhile, joined Counsell’s bench and is now attempting to lead the Brewers to the World Series for the first time since 1982.

“We’ve got a great relationship,” Roberts said. “We go way back and have a great friendship, and I’m really impressed with what he’s done with that ballclub. … They play to win. Regardless of how it comes out, he’s had a tremendous season.” 

The Brewers don’t have the star power — or the actual power — of their opponent. But their pitchers limit hard contact. Their offense works the count, puts the ball in play, forces mistakes and gets active on the basepaths. And their defense is among the best in baseball. 

It’s a matchup of “Johnny Junior College” vs. Goliath. 

“They’re just gritty; they’re tough,” Roberts said. “They take on Murph’s personality.”

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.