MILWAUKEE -- Sal Frelick’s greatest moment in the Major Leagues wasn’t a hit, a catch or any of the other memorable things he’s done on a baseball field, even though he’s had plenty of meme-worthy moments.
It was picking up the tab for dinner with Christian Yelich.
“He’s always paying for everything,” Frelick said. “We finally got him this year. Me and some of the dudes were out to dinner somewhere. Houston, it might have been. We snuck in behind him and finally paid for him.
“I was like, ‘This is one of the greatest days of my life. I got to pay for Christian Yelich.’”
How did Yelich react?
“Standard,” Frelick said. “He was mad. He was like, ‘That’s not how this works.’”
It was the least Frelick and his teammates could do for their longtime captain, a title that was unofficial until the final weekend of the regular season when the Brewers made Yelich the first player to wear a “C” stitched on his jersey. He was one of only three active captains in the Majors at year’s end, with the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and the Royals’ Salvador Perez.
Yelich’s first reaction was to decline the honor, pending a phone call with Robin Yount, the Hall of Famer who spent all 20 of his big league seasons with the Brewers. Only when Yount blessed the gesture did Yelich accept it, and that, in itself, says something about what he means to an organization in the midst of its eighth postseason berth in the past nine years – a stretch of success that began with Yelich’s arrival in a blockbuster trade with the Marlins in January 2018.
How far the franchise has come since then.
Nine months later, it was one game away from the World Series. Now the team and Yelich are on the eve of their third NLCS against the Dodgers.
“I think it's more of just like the expectation to be here at this point,” Yelich said. “Going into Spring Training, it's gradually gone from ‘Let's make the playoffs’ to ‘We're going to make a deep run in the playoffs.’
“Everybody expects to be at this point and to be able to compete at this point. I think that's where it's evolved over the last 10 years.”
Over his nine seasons in Milwaukee, he’s won one MVP Award and finished runner-up for another. He’s signed a $200-plus million contract. He’s made three All-Star teams. He’s slumped, fractured his kneecap and undergone back surgery. He’s been right in the middle of baseball’s smallest market, beating projections year after year. And he’s been part of all the abrupt endings in October as the Brewers have fallen short of the World Series.
Heck, he’s even posed in his birthday suit for the cover of ESPN’s Body Issue.
And still, Brewers manager Pat Murphy believes it is an under-told story.
“It's a great story of the superstar who just didn't think about himself; he thought about others,” Murphy said. “And what a lesson that is for everybody watching and everybody around [the team]. I wish it was told more -- who this dude is.
“There's no BS about this guy. It's organic. It's genuine. It's appropriate. It's kind. It's all the things that, you know -- it's not some gruff, ‘I'm going to tell you what to do’ authoritative figure. It's pretty nice. It’s special.”
Yelich would trade all of the awards and the “C” on his jersey for a World Series trophy, of course. The Brewers are one of five current franchises – along with the Mariners, Padres, Rays and Rockies – that have never won the World Series. Yelich, fairly or unfairly, has worn some of the blame for that from critics who point to his own postseason performance. Between a home run in Game 1 of the 2018 NLCS against the Dodgers and an RBI single in Game 3 of this year’s NLDS against the Padres, he went 19 postseason games without driving in a run.
But that has not changed how important he has been to the ballclub. With two years left on his contract after this one, Yelich and the Brewers are running out of opportunities to go all the way.
“I’ve said this before, we’re going to have to find a way to honor Christian Yelich someday,” said Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold. “I don’t know if it’s one of those numbers [in the rafters] because those are Hall of Famers, but something special for him, man. He’s been here through the best era of baseball here, and he’s been right in the middle of all of it.”
Naming him captain was a start. When Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff heard the news, he teared up.
“I thought it was the coolest thing,” said Woodruff, the Brewers’ only player who predates Yelich. “He’s the voice of our club. He deserves everything he gets. And I think this is the cool thing about it: It hasn’t been MVP every single year. He went through some rough times, and he came through on the other side. I think that’s what a leader is about.”
“It was the most emotion I’ve ever seen out of him,” Frelick said. “He said that honor is No. 1, and he’s won Silver Sluggers and MVPs and All-Stars. That it’s No. 1 speaks pretty highly of what it meant to him.”