MILWAUKEE — Some baseball traditions are timeless. Like when players assemble on the chalk line on an Opening Day in March or prior to a postseason series game in October, with bunting hanging from each deck of the stadium and fans on their feet to cheer their favorite player, boo their preferred villain and, of course, watch Pat Murphy summarily snub anyone who comes within reach of a handshake.
You might have noticed it prior to Saturday’s Game 1 of this National League Division Series between Murphy’s Brewers and the Cubs. As each of his starting position players approached and reached out a hand, the Milwaukee manager stared straight ahead as if saying with his eyes, “Keep walking, buddy.”
The next player to suppress a smile will be the first.
“It’s tradition,” Murphy said Sunday, suppressing his own grin. “I’ve done it for 10 years now whenever we’ve had introductions. I just think it’s — I call it ‘happy horse manure.’ It sounds better when I use the other word, but I’m not going to use it because I don’t use that kind of language in a public setting.”
He broke that rule approximately one millisecond later, and that’s all you need to know about the second-year Brewers skipper. You never know what he’s going to say. And you never know what he’s going to do.
“It’s just, like, who ‘Murph’ is to me,” said lefty reliever Aaron Ashby, who will start Game 2 as an opener for the Brewers on Monday at 8:08 p.m. CT. “It’s funny. I think we all get a kick out of it.”
Count it among the many quirks of “Murph,” who, for the record, has a similar take on celebrating birthdays past age 10. He’s strongly opposed, for the same reasons he eschews foul line introductions.
“You go down the line and shake their hands, and then they go warm up and they come in the dugout and you shake their hands and do some crazy handshake with them; you know what I mean?” Murphy said. “This is a lot of happy horse [manure]. Let’s play the game.
“So it’s kind of tradition, and if you remember way back, I don’t know what year, [former Brewers shortstop Orlando] Arcia, like, punched me really hard in the chest and almost knocked me down,” Murphy said. “‘Yeli’ [Christian Yelich] is kind of doing that. But he knows it [is coming]. Some players, like [Andrew] Vaughn was so sincere. He didn’t know it. Some guys forget.
“But I never go down and shake their hands. I just go right to the line. I didn’t know you noticed. I didn’t think anybody noticed.”
