HOUSTON -- At least one screen in the Brewers’ clubhouse at Daikin Park carried the feed of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s baseball team scoring a stunning victory over No. 4-ranked Auburn in the first game of the NCAA Tournament on Friday. And you’d find it in the Astros’ clubhouse, too.
Brewers manager Pat Murphy, a former collegiate coach himself who has come to know UWM’s baseball staff well, and Astros reliever AJ Blubaugh, who pitched three collegiate seasons for UWM, both are well aware of what this one victory meant to a program coming off a 25-31 regular season, which hadn’t made it to the NCAA Tournament since 2010, and hadn’t won a tournament game since 1999.
The Panthers went on the road to take down the top seed in their regional by jumping to a 4-0 lead in the first inning en route to a 13-8 win.
“I can probably speak for most of those kids playing there that Milwaukee was probably their only Division I offers,” said Blubaugh, an Ohio native who went to UWM for exactly that reason, and pitched in Milwaukee from 2020-22. “So to go to Auburn, where they have the NIL, where they have the top recruits, and guys who are going to get drafted -- I don’t know if any of the guys from UW-Milwaukee are going to get drafted this year, obviously I hope they do -- but it shows why this is the most beautiful game ever. Anything can happen.”
Since Blubaugh is one of only two UWM products currently in the Majors (the Blue Jays’ Daulton Varsho is the other), Panthers head coach Shaun Wegner asked Blubaugh to record a video to pump up the team. He asked the same from Murphy, who has gotten to know and like Wegner in recent years.
“I was just ecstatic for those guys,” said Murphy, who says he told Panthers players, ‘Hey, look, if you just want to go down there, it’s good enough. You’ll be remembered forever. You qualified, won the [Horizon League] tournament. Or, you can go down there and realize the pressure’s on them and just have fun so you don’t have any regrets. Lay it all on the line.’ And when I saw the score today I was like, ‘They’re going to do it.’ Great, great victory for Coach Sean. I’m so happy for him.
“They were 25-31. But now they can have no regrets. ‘We went down there and we did it.’ That’s going to help a lot of them in their careers. I’m just really happy for the program. It’s really awesome. And the coaching staff, because I know some of those guys. It’s awesome.”
Blubaugh was already excited for this weekend because of his ties to Milwaukee. He studied elementary education at UWM and grew close with his new community while student-teaching second and third graders in the Milwaukee Public Schools.
Memories of that time came rushing back when five-year-old group texts buzzed back to life Friday, as former teammates followed the game all over the country. Those texts kept Blubaugh apprised of the score as he made his way to work on Friday, and by the seventh inning, he was able to watch for himself.
“I’m getting chills thinking about all the other pitchers and position players who have come through that school, who have been so good, that just haven’t gotten a shot or are still working their way,” Blubaugh said. “It’s super cool seeing all of this come to fruition.”