MILWAUKEE -- “What’s with the handshakes?”
The question for Brewers manager Pat Murphy came Friday night from Thanasis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks’ forward, budding podcaster and older brother of NBA superstar Giannis, who was sitting on a couch just off stage at the Riverside Theater and laughing. Murphy and Brewers players Jacob Misiorowski, Brice Turang and Trevor Megill were among guests for a live episode of Thanasis’ podcast, Thanalysis, which culminated with an hourlong conversation with professional wrestling legend Ric Flair.
First, though, and because the Brewers’ Opening Day win was barely 24 hours in the rearview mirror, Thanasis wanted to know about the handshakes.
Murphy is notably anti-handshake, at least during foul line introductions. If you watched closely prior to the Brewers’ 14-2 romp over the White Sox at American Family Field on Thursday, you saw him snub each of his players as they came down the line, just as Murphy has done every year in the postseason and on every other opportunity since he came to Milwaukee as bench coach back in 2016.
“I mean, we shake hands a million times,” Murphy said to laughs from the crowd. “We see each other all day long. We got to the ballpark, the game was at one o’clock, we got there at 8 a.m. I saw Brice 15 times. We go out to the line and I call it, 'happy horse manure,' you know what I mean?
“And it’s fun when the new guys come and they think I’m going to shake their hand, and I don’t.”
Murphy felt the love from the crowd and so did his players, who each got a turn on the microphone. Especially eloquent was Turang, who talked about the intensity of playing for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic.
Thanasis, it turns out, is a fan of the Brewers' second baseman.
“A couple of years ago we’re at a Brewers game and there’s a single on the first-base side,” said Thanasis’ co-host, Tony Cartagena. “And I’m standing next to ‘TA,’ who’s learning baseball and picks up sports quicker than anyone ever should. He looks at me and goes, ‘How fast is this kid?’”
“In basketball, he’ll probably be a point guard or a two guard,” Antetokounmpo said.
“What people don’t know is that this guy has got it all,” Murphy said. “He doesn’t just run good. He’s got pop. He’s got it in here [in his heart]. You can’t explain that, you can just smell it. You walk by this kid, you can smell it.”
“And this type of talk,” Antetokounmpo said, looking out at the crowd, “this is how a coach talks about his players. Did everybody hear this? Really pour into their cup and into their spirit.”
They heard. It was that kind of night, a celebration of both local stars and that stylin', profilin', limousine ridin', jet-flying son of a gun, Flair, who spent an hour telling stories -- a handful of them even clean enough for a family podcast -- about his legendary wrestling career.
Milwaukee, he said, was always one of the best stops on the wrestling circuit, Flair said, with fans so passionate he remembers fighting his way out of the arena after a show. Before Friday’s show, he met Murphy and the Brewers players in the green room, and loved what he heard from the manager and players on stage.
“That’s not just any manager, that’s the two-time [National League] Manager of the Year. And the young man talking about playing for Team USA?” Flair said, referring to Turang, “That's the kind of thing people want to hear.”