CHRISTIAN YELICH HAD tears in his eyes.
The Milwaukee Brewers had just been eliminated from the 2024 MLB postseason in heartbreaking fashion when New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso homered off closer Devin Williams in the ninth inning of Game 3 of their wild-card series.
But Yelich wasn’t necessarily getting emotional about just his team’s loss.
The tears came after a postgame interaction with legendary Milwaukee broadcaster Bob Uecker. The two shared a bond, grown out of years of mutual respect. Aside from Uecker, Yelich had become the face of the Brewers. An MVP season in 2018 followed by a huge contract extension to keep Yelich in town for the rest of his career cemented the man some players call “Cap” as the guy in Milwaukee — after Uecker, of course.
“Yelich bridges the evolution of our franchise, going from Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun and Rickie Weeks to Christian Yelich,” general manager Matt Arnold told ESPN recently. “I think he’s somebody that has seen a lot in his life.”
When Uecker died in January, not long after that final game-day interaction, it hit Yelich hard. Even if he had some inkling that the painful playoff loss might be Uecker’s last, he had no way of knowing at the time that it would be Uecker’s last day at American Family Field and that the 2024 season would be the final one shared with someone who had taught Yelich so much along the way.
“I think his biggest gift was he was authentically himself,” Yelich told ESPN this month. “This is Bob Uecker. He genuinely cares how you’re doing. A young player gets called up for the first time, he knows everything about him, first time he’s ever met him, but he knows where he went to school, where he’s from. What he’s about. I tried to learn from that.”
Yelich met Uecker just days after being traded to Milwaukee in January 2018. Brewers ownership sent a plane to pick up their new star outfielder, and on it were Uecker and Hall of Famer Robin Yount. Since that day, the two had been close — hanging around the office, dugout and batting cage, often with the Brewers’ managers, Pat Murphy and previously Craig Counsell. But in Milwaukee, everyone deferred to Uecker.
“Ueck was always first,” Counsell recalled with a smile. “That’s just how it works. Everyone wanted it to be that way. Even the best player. He wanted it that way.”
After all, it was Uecker with over 50 years in the game and the countless stories that come with all that experience. Yelich listened. And learned.
“It was just the way he connects with people,” Yelich said. “When you talk to Ueck, whether he knew you or not, you would feel as though he’d known you for a long time and you guys were great friends. I’ve tried to do that with our players as well.”
On Opening Day this year, Yelich honored Uecker by wearing a checkered-plaid suit to the ballpark in New York. Then when the Brewers memorialized their iconic broadcaster before their home opener, everyone looked to Yelich — counting on Milwaukee’s MVP to lead the way as the face of the franchise from that day forward.
“He was a huge part of that celebration for Uecker,” teammate Rhys Hoskins said of Yelich. “He was probably more nervous than stepping on a baseball field.”
‘When the tough things happen, it’s your responsibility’
YELICH IS SEVERAL years removed from his MVP-caliber seasons, but he began to recapture that form when he compiled a .909 OPS over his first 73 games last season. He was also on his way to a career high in stolen bases before back problems ended his year prematurely. It was crushing. The Brewers were a contender but would have to play on without their leader.
Despite missing the final two months on the field, Yelich was present cheering his teammates on during every step of Milwaukee’s march to a third NL Central title in four years.
That type of leadership comes as no surprise to his former manager Counsell, who said: “It’s often when the tough things happen, it’s your responsibility. That’s Yelich.”
Despite being fully recovered this season, it has been slow going at the plate for Yelich; his current .663 OPS would be a career low for an entire season.
“It took a little while to get back up to speed of just playing at the major league level and feeling things out coming off of a surgery,” he said. “But I feel good.”
Like Yelich, the entire Brewers team is scuffling so far this season. They have been shutout six times already, combined with a myriad of pitching injuries that have Milwaukee sitting in fourth place. The Brewers haven’t finished that low in the division in a decade and they’ll need their leaders more than ever to get back in the race.
Those around Yelich are confident he’ll find his form again, remembering what the Yelich experience was like during the best of times: In 2018 and 2019, he led the league in batting, slugging and OPS. It’s when his career went to another level and the Brewers began a run of making the postseason in seven of the next eight years.
“The second half of 2018 is what I remember,” Counsell said. “It changed but he didn’t change. That’s so hard to do. Everything off the field changes but he stayed true to himself.”
Asked his favorite Yelich memory, Arnold quickly recalled a game in St. Louis, late in 2018. The Cardinals intentionally walked Lorenzo Cain to get to Yelich, who promptly hit a three-run, game-changing home run off lefty Brett Cecil.
“No one could believe they pitched around anyone to get to Yelich,” Arnold said. “I remember Cain laughing, like, ‘What the heck are you guys doing?'”
Right-handed pitcher Colin Rea used to watch Yelich as a teammate but now has to face him as a member of the Chicago Cubs. He attempted to explain Yelich’s greatness: “The way the ball jumps off his bat. It’s just different. It’s like a golf swing where you’re barely trying and it goes a long way. There’s something about the point of contact.”
As Yelich tries to get back to that version of himself, he reflected on his time in Milwaukee, calling it the “right place” for him. He could have tested free agency but chose to make one of the smaller markets in the game his home when he signed an extension ahead of the 2020 season, keeping him in Milwaukee through 2028 while knowing that every year would be a fight for his team to contend.
“Yeah, of course I’ve wondered what it would’ve been like to play in a big market and have that experience, but it’s just not how my career played out,” Yelich said. “And I liked it here. I wanted to be here. They obviously wanted me to be here too, and I think it’s a great place to play baseball.
“It’s a challenge to play in a big market, but it’s also a different kind of challenge to play in this market too.”
‘It’s essential to have that pillar’
MILWAUKEE IS NEVER going to be among the league leaders in payroll. After climbing as high as 18th in that department last season — and then winning the division by 10 games — the Brewers dropped to 23rd this year. Their offseason moves were nearly nonexistent aside from signing 36-year-old starter Jose Quintana for $4 million late in the winter.
The year-over-year trend of low payrolls with high win totals has been the norm for Yelich’s entire career, first in Miami and the past seven seasons in Milwaukee. Despite the challenges that come with trying to do more with less, the Brewers continue to contend year after year — and that comes from a clubhouse full of players focused on the one thing in their control: playing the game the right way in order to win.
“You’re in an underdog role every year so you have to make up in some other areas,” Yelich said. “You can’t just go toe-to-toe with the Dodgers or the New York Yankees or the Cubs. You’re just not going to, so you have to find advantages or closeness with your team and you have to do things differently.”
Prioritizing speed and defense is one way the Brewers have found they can make up gaps with teams they cannot outspend or outslug. Milwaukee ranked second in stolen bases last season, and ranks first in that category this year. The Brewers have stolen more bases than any other National League team since Yelich arrived in 2018.
But their glove work has waned some over the first six weeks of this season, and their record has reflected it, leading Murphy to remind his team what the right way to play the game looks like. Yelich, despite making a costly error in San Francisco last month, has been front and center in backing his manager up.
“He knows the things that I’m about, he stands behind me,” Murphy said. “It’s essential to have that pillar.”
After his arrival in Milwaukee and elevation to one of the game’s best players, Yelich quickly understood that the “Brewers Way” was the path to success. When a team’s best player is playing the game the right way, others take notice.
“As a young guy, when you see an older guy take pride in that stuff, alarms go off,” 25-year-old outfielder Sal Frelick said.
Murphy added: “It’s not telling guys what they’re supposed to do. It’s showing them what you’re supposed to do.”
Others who have played with Yelich say he will pick the right moment to say something to the rest of them.
“During team meetings he’ll speak up,” Rea said. “Everyone tends to listen to what he has to say. He’s all-in on his career. That’s his total focus: ‘This is the way you’re supposed to play the game. You shouldn’t be playing it any other way.'”
Hoskins said Yelich has a “feel” for what the moment needs, like a good manager. The outfielder quickly understood his role had expanded when he signed his nine-year, $215 million contract before the 2020 season.
“When you take the money, there’s a certain responsibility that you have to not only perform, but it goes beyond performance,” Yelich explained. “I think for me it’s you still have to impact people and you have to do right by the organization. You can’t just take the money and shut it down whether you’re playing good or not.”
‘He’s someone I can go to for anything’
BRICE TURANG WAS just 18 years old in 2018, beginning his pro career at the lowest levels of the minor leagues after being drafted in the first round by Milwaukee that year. At the same time, Yelich was at the top of his sport, winning NL MVP his first year in Milwaukee and finishing second the next year. But the Brewers star still found the time to reach out to one of the franchise’s top prospects.
“He would text me in the minor leagues just to check in on how I was doing,” Turang said. “I couldn’t believe it. He would shoot a message to me when I was 18 or 19. The year he won the MVP, he would check in with me all the time.”
Now that he was the seasoned major leaguer with a secure spot in a clubhouse, he was applying the lessons that stuck with him from early in his career, taught to him when he was still in Miami.
When Yelich was a highly touted prospect trying to secure his place with the Marlins in 2013, veteran catcher Jeff Mathis played a crucial role in making him feel like he belonged.
“He just took us under his wing and talked to us about the game and what it takes to prepare in the big league, be big leaguers, how to conduct yourself and what it means to be a pro, and I’m super thankful for that,” Yelich said. “I’m trying to do that here as well.”
Twelve years later, Mathis recalls Yelich as a player who was very “receptive” to instruction, calling his former teammate “a great human being.”
“As I was getting older, younger players feel like they have it all figured out,” Mathis said in a phone interview this week. “He stood out as someone that was willing to listen. Not just to benefit himself but everyone around him.”
Now that Yelich is on the other end of those moments, he has found that letting interactions come naturally can have more of an impact than getting up and giving a rah-rah speech at the front of the clubhouse. It’s the same focus on cultivating connections that made Uecker a Milwaukee icon for so many years.
“I don’t force it trying to help those guys,” Yelich said. “It’s just more of, like, you be friends first and you build relationships with people and you’re welcoming and you introduce yourself and you talk to ’em about whatever, their life or joke around with whatever’s going on in the world: ‘What’s going on, dude? Where are you from? How’d you get here? What’s your story? Is everything good? Do you need anything? Do you have any questions?’
“It’s little things. They make a big difference.”
Nearly every young prospect in the Brewers’ clubhouse has their own story of Yelich’s impact. Frelick is another who heard from Yelich when he was still in the minors.
“You’ll be up here soon,” Yelich told him. “Let’s get ahead of that, teach what routine is, teach you what it is to be a big leaguer.”
“I’m forever grateful for that,” Frelick said.
Of all the young players who have heeded Yelich’s advice, few might have needed it more than outfielder Jackson Chourio, who debuted with the team last season as a 20-year-old.
“He knows the opportune moments to say something,” Chourio said through the team interpreter. “He knows when the time is right. He has a good feel for that.
“We had a long conversation about it being a long season. He told me to relax and play my game. It took some pressure off of me.”
Chourio finished third in rookie of the year voting and made his older teammate proud with his fast adjustment to life in the majors.
Whether it comes from an encouraging text to a minor leaguer or words of wisdom to a young major league teammate, the lessons Yelich learned from his own mentors, from Mathis to Uecker, have made him the clear face of the franchise with an impact that reaches far past his stat line.
“You want to leave wherever place you’re in better than when you got there,” Yelich said. “And for me it’s just, it’s the right thing to do to help these kids, and if you want to be on a good team, you have to play certain ways. For us, you’re going to rely on young players, and with young players there’s growing pains.
“But when people feel like a genuine connection to you, they’re more responsive and you have better relationships and you have deeper conversations and things mean more and there’s a closeness and a tightness and a bond that’s created there. That leads to winning baseball.”
Turang added: “He’s someone I can go to for anything.”
