​Pat Murphy’s long baseball journey finally reached the summit with the Brewers’ first World Series title originally appeared on The Sporting News.
Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.Pat Murphy has spent much of his life close to baseball’s biggest moments. He took Arizona State to the College World Series four times. He coached Notre Dame to within one win of Omaha in three straight seasons. He managed in the minor leagues, got a brief shot as an interim major league skipper and returned to Milwaukee as Craig Counsell’s bench coach.For years, the title that mattered most stayed just out of reach. Now, after the Brewers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in five games, Murphy is a World Series champion. Milwaukee has its first championship in franchise history, and the 67-year-old manager has the career-defining moment that eluded him through decades of coaching.The result is historic for the Brewers. Murphy’s path to it is its own kind of baseball story: a long apprenticeship built on relentless curiosity, hard-earned perspective and the willingness to keep going when the next job was never guaranteed.The player who never stopped coachingMurphy’s baseball life began far from a major league dugout. At Florida Atlantic University, he pitched and played around the diamond. He signed with the San Francisco Giants in 1982, spent four years in professional baseball and eventually moved into coaching. He was a player-manager in the minors before he became a college head coach.The journey is complete! The Brewers are the last team standing https://t.co/lRETn32jDV— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 29, 2026His first stop was Maryville College in Tennessee. Then came Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, Notre Dame and Arizona State. Murphy turned Notre Dame into a nationally respected program, going 318-116-1 in seven seasons. The Irish reached the NCAA regional finals in 1992, 1993 and 1994, coming one victory short of the College World Series each time.At Arizona State, Murphy’s teams reached the College World Series four times. His 1998 Sun Devils advanced to the championship game, the closest he came to a national title. He finished his college head-coaching career with 1,000 victories, a remarkable record that still left the sport’s biggest trophy out of his hands.Murphy’s coaching style could be intense, inventive and occasionally overbearing. He has also been unusually candid about what it took to grow into the leader he wanted to be. “I made every mistake three times,” he said in an MLB.com profile, describing how ego and insecurity could make him rely too heavily on authority. His own shorthand for the ongoing work: “I’m under construction.”The detour that became an educationAfter leaving Arizona State, Murphy joined the San Diego Padres organization. He managed in the minors before becoming the Padres’ interim manager in 2015, when the team went 42-54. San Diego chose another manager for the