Numbers are an essential component of baseball. Certain data tell a tale about the game’s past, present, and future, whether in terms of history, preparation, or finances.
For Pat Murphy, the everyday grind of a baseball season boils down to one number: 200.
As in the “200 Club,” a phrase he and Harvey Dorfman, the legendary sports psychologist, coined roughly two decades ago. Coming up with the “200 Club” involves a little bit of mental math, assigning a numerical value (A being one and Z being 26) to each letter of a choice motto of Murphy’s that starts with a word that is not exactly fit to print and ends with the word “relentless.” You can do the math, but the bottom line: Both words together add up to 200.
“Can you stay in the present for every pitch?” Murphy said. “It doesn’t matter what happened last pitch, next pitch, what the score is, where you’re hitting on the order; can you stay in the present for this pitch? Offense, defense, on the bench, whatever. That’s kind of the mantra I go by.”
Listening to Murphy talk about the 200 Club, it’s clear why the Brewers believed he was the right guy to take over after Craig Counsell joined the Cubs.
His passion and energy are infectious, and his relentless approach has proven to be the perfect match for a Brewers club that has already faced its share of adversity this season.
“Every team that I’ve been a part of takes on the personality of the manager,” general manager Matt Arnold remarked. “Murph is obviously feisty, as seen by the number of times we cleaned benches this year [laughs]. He’s a competitor at heart, and that’s his brand. That’s ingrained in our clubhouse and how we play the game.”
In this game, you’re going to fail at times, but you have to keep your head down and keep going. That’s the 200 Club,” Wade Miley said. “If you’re playing hard and you’re playing the game the right way, there’s never an issue with Murph.”
Counsell’s sudden departure for Chicago last November left the Brewers without a manager, and while the 65-year-old Murphy was an obvious candidate after spending the past eight seasons as Counsell’s bench coach, some wondered if Milwaukee would look outside the organization for its next skipper.
