I’ve long hated Craig Counsell. I hate him more than any other figure in professional sports. If sports were the swamp, Craig Counsell would be my mosquito. If sports were geopolitics, Craig Counsell would be my Putin. These last few years, Craig Counsell was my nemesis, filling the months between National Invitation Tournaments with loathing, fear (that he would win a World Series), and rage.
For as much as I hated Craig Counsell, though, I never thought he was a bad manager. In fact, I always thought he was a good manager. That’s why I hated him! That little weasel was making a fool out of my favorite baseball team. If he weren’t a threat, I probably wouldn’t have cared.
Had a tricky genie appeared to me two years ago and offered me an opportunity to see Craig Counsell stumble, I probably would have taken it. I’m afraid, in hindsight, that I did. Because what tricky genie wouldn’t relish the opportunity to take my greatest wish and turn it into my favorite team’s greatest downfall? We’re learning Craig Counsell might suck at this. We’re learning that because the Cubs are falling apart.
There are two other characters in this story. The first is Josh Hader. Josh Hader is a very good relief pitcher who made Craig Counsell look like a genius. When a team wins close games, we credit the manager. When Craig Counsell did it, we probably should have credited Josh Hader a little more. (Josh Hader would agree.)
The second is Pat Murphy. He’s the one we really ought to talk about more. Pat Murphy, for those unfamiliar, was once Craig Counsell’s baseball coach at Notre Dame. Murphy did well at Notre Dame, well enough to get hired at a real baseball school in Arizona State. Once at Arizona State, his career took a twist. Arizona State, being a real baseball school, was cheating behind the scenes. Bribing recruits. Paying players. Treating baseball like college football. This was the 2000’s. The NCAA came swooping in.
Murphy managed not to know about the cheating. He kept his own record clean. He did, however, get severely reprimanded by the NCAA. Arizona State got hit with the dreaded “lack of institutional control.”
There’s another piece to the NCAA/ASU story, though, and while it might be apocryphal, it works really, really well with our preferred Pat Murphy narrative. The story goes that when the NCAA formally handed down the lack of institutional control ruling, it included another citation in the memo. Pat Murphy, the story goes, was cited for treating the NCAA’s investigators with a “cavalier attitude.” Pat Murphy, the story implies, was so much of an asshole to the NCAA that the NCAA cited him for it. The NCAA concluded their investigation, went back to NCAA headquarters, typed up a memo, and sent it to Arizona State, saying in effect, You lost control of your baseball program’s boosters. Also, your coach was very rude. Arizona State ran Murphy out of town. This has to be the only instance in history of a successful college coach getting pushed out for being disagreeable.
Where Murphy’s disagreeability becomes relevant to Craig Counsell’s story is that a few years after leaving Tempe, Murphy reunited with Counsell back in the Midwest. Counsell had taken the job managing the Brewers, and he wanted Murphy to be his bench coach. Murphy obliged. The two joined forces ahead of the 2015 season. By the end of their third year, the Brewers were playoff contenders. In their fourth season, the Brewers began to take over the NL Central. Beginning with that 2018 campaign, the Brewers have won the Central three times, the Cardinals have won it twice, and the Cubs have won it once, with that once a Covid anomaly. The Brewers are on their way to number four this year. The hiring of Counsell & Murphy started a good run in Milwaukee. Other things happened around then too, but that was when the team’s current identity was born.
The Counsell/Murphy Brewers have always played with an edge. They’ve always been disrespectful. Like Murphy in Tempe, disagreeable. As Joe Maddon used to urge his Rays to be, the Brewers have been irreverent. That’s what you do when you play in a leaking dome and your division rivals boast big brands with big history. I found myself in a place two years ago where I realized I hated the Brewers more than the Cardinals. A Cardinals fan confessed to me he felt the same way, hating the Brewers more than the Cubs. Counsell was such a weasel, and those bastards playing under him had no conscience. Rivalries ceased to matter. It all became hate. Against most teams, retaliation would happen and the sides would say, “Now we’re even.” Against the Brewers, retaliation was only ever met with more retaliation. In the shadow of Counsell’s persistent flatness, this felt sociopathic.
Now, Counsell’s in Chicago, and there is no echo of the fire he seemed to stoke in Wisconsin. Joe Maddon and David Ross’s Cubs were criticized for being low on vigor, but in the way where they were too easygoing. Craig Counsell’s Cubs are low on vigor, but in the way where they resemble Toby Flenderson. Charlie Brown finally made the big leagues. He’s batting .194 in a platoon role at Wrigley Field.
How can this be? How did the Cubs take on Counsell’s soullessness while the Brewers became pillaging vikings under his hand? How is this fair? What kind of baseball-loving god allows this injustice to occur??
The answer, it turns out, is Pat Murphy. (Not the god part. Pat Murphy is not a god. Thank God for that.)
Since Pat Murphy became the Brewers’ manager, the Brewers have been ready to fight everybody. They got into it with the Mets. They got into it with the White Sox. They somehow got into it with the majority of teams in the American League East. This all happened within the first two months or so of Murphy’s tenure. The Brewers, who were already so willing to sack a village, have become even bigger terrorists than they used to be under Murphy’s direct rule. Evidently Craig Counsell was bumming them out. He was bumming them out the whole time! With an assistant as inflammatory as Pat Murphy, though, that was merely a moderating influence.
The nice thing about this is that we’ve uncovered the secret behind Craig Counsell’s success, and since he never won a World Series, it’ll be easy to send him back to the front office world. We won’t have to call him a legend. We can put him back in his natural habitat. The scary thing about this is that we’re probably going to see a lot of Pat Murphy imitations pop up over the next few years. Having distilled baseball down to the revolutions per minute on Paul Skenes’s splinker, some front office visionary is going to realize the new inefficiency is to find the biggest meathead possible and place him in charge of the clubhouse. John Lackey and Jonathan Papelbon are going to be reunited, but in a dystopian future where they’re managing the Marlins and the Tigers and they’ve agreed to settle a game with a combination keg race/bodyslamming competition. MLB Network is going to air an Amazing Race-style special in which general managers try to track down Carl Everett to be their bench coach. John Rocker is going to get the keys to the Boston Red Sox, but he’s going to use what he learned on Survivor to decide final spring training cuts by letting relief pitchers vote one another off the island, and by island I mean the miniature Green Monster at JetBlue Park.
We thought Craig Counsell was part of the nerdy baseball takeover. It turns out, he was a trojan horse all along. Pat Murphy’s in the city now. And he’s laying waste.
Etc.
- We never got Keisei Tominaga in the NIT, which is cosmic bullshit, and now, we probably won’t get him as a Mad Ant. Tominaga signed an Exhibit 10 contract last week with the Pacers, and if I remember Tacko Fall’s early professional career correctly, Exhibit 10 contracts often lead to a place on a G-League roster. Tominaga, then, should be an Indiana Mad Ant this fall. Except. The Mad Ants are supposed to change their name once they move into the new arena in Noblesville. They kept it this year while playing in Indianapolis, after the move from Fort Wayne (where the real Mad Ants played), but it’s still supposed to be on its way out. Tominaga keeps coming so close to very specific kinds of glory.
- Novak Djokovic got into it with the fans today at Wimbledon, accusing them of saying Ruuuuune (he was playing Holger Rune) as an excuse to boo him. The best part is how he handled it in the post-match interview: “To all the fans that have respect and that stayed here tonight, thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate it. And to all those people that have chosen to disrespect the player—in this case, me—have a goooood night. Goooood night. Goooood night. Very goooood night.” What a heel. Talk about commitment to the persona.
- Shoutout to the Arena Football League, which is somehow still in action? This spring, it looked like the AFL was going belly-up again. Half the league’s teams folded. Players were not getting paid. We thought it was done! Turns out, if you fire your commissioner and install Jeff Fisher, there is nothing you can’t do. This weekend, CBS Sports Network will carry the league’s semifinals featuring the Salina Liberty, the Albany Firebirds, the Nashville Kats, and the Billings Outlaws. (Kansas, New York, Tennessee, and Montana, respectively. I know there are a lot of Albany’s out there.)
