MILWAUKEE — Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell was back behind his old mic Friday afternoon at American Family Field, returning to the room where he held daily news conferences.
“Look …” he would tell the Milwaukee Brewers reporters, followed by some words of wisdom about how hard baseball is or how his pitchers are all out-getters or whatever else was on his mind.
Counsell still has some of the same Counsellisms, but this time he’s back as the guy trying to ruin the Brewers’ dream season and put the Cubs into the National League Championship Series for the first time since 2017.
But being home again was not a topic Counsell wanted to entertain Friday when he met with the media on the eve of the best-of-five NL Division Series between the Cubs and Brewers.
“I think we’ve been over that part,” he said on his feelings of being back. “We’re getting ready for a playoff series and trying to advance to have a chance to play in the World Series. That’s the job at hand, that’s the focus right now. We’ve already (addressed) the other stuff.”
Counsell admitted he did spend quite a bit of time behind the desk.
“There weren’t that many people in the room usually,” he said. “Only three of you.”
Try as he might, Counsell won’t be able to escape the fact he’s Public Enemy No. 1 in Milwaukee as the NL Central rivals meet for the first time in the postseason. This is the matchup everyone wanted to see when he bolted Milwaukee after the 2023 season to move on up to the big city, with a bigger payroll and the biggest salary of any major-league manager.
His former bench coach, Pat Murphy, replaced Counsell and has managed to finish first in the NL Central in both seasons on the job. Murphy is now as popular in Milwaukee as cheese curds and pull tabs, offering colorful quotes to reporters and winning at the same time.
One Brewers media member asked Murphy on Friday whether he wanted to “beat (Counsell’s) butt” this series.
“It wouldn’t matter who is over there,” Murphy said. “That goes without saying. This happens all the time in sports, right? Player to player is different than manager to manager. But yeah, if they want to make it a Holyfield-Tyson thing, I’d probably have a better shot. You assumed I was Tyson, is that what you’re saying?”
Hopefully it won’t become a Holyfield-Tyson thing, because that might mean Murphy would bite off a chunk of Counsell’s ear. That might be good for ratings but bad for Counsell’s hearing.
Counsell is long gone, but the Brewers gave him a welcome-back gift during Friday’s workout, playing a medley of Yacht Rock songs during Cubs batting practice, like “Sailing” from Christopher Cross and John Denver’s “You Fill Up My Senses.” It was well-known here that Counsell hated that kind of music, so give the Brewers props for trolling their former manager without having to admit to it and lulling Cubs hitters to sleep during their workout.
If that’s all the Brewers have got, the Cubs should be fine.
Cubs players know how big this is for Counsell, who still lives in Whitefish Bay, Wis., and is not afraid to be seen in public.
“I think Couns is pretty focused on our group,” Nico Hoerner said Friday. “Obviously Milwaukee has been a home for him. I can’t speak what that’s like emotionally for him, but I know he’s doing everything he can for us to win these games.”
Brewers manager Pat Murphy, left, and Cubs manager Craig Counsell exchange lineups with umpire Jansen Visconti before a game on May 2, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Kayla Wolf/AP)
Counsell knows exactly what’s in store for him. As he told us in May during the Cubs’ first trip to the ballpark formerly known as Miller Park, his brother-in-law, Todd, told the family during dinner they had to hurry up and get to the game.
When the kids asked what was the rush, Todd replied: “I want to see Craig get booed.”
But Counsell will also be cheered, since thousands of road-tripping Cubs fans are expected to be in attendance Saturday and Monday. At the moment his popularity in Chicago is sky high after a series in which he went from genius in Game 1 to bum in Game 2 and back to genius in Game 3. It’s a fickle town with no shortage of fans who believe they know more than the Cubs manager. Just ask Joe Maddon, who won a World Series but will never be completely forgiven for taking Kyle Hendricks out of Game 7 in Cleveland.
Caravans will be heading up I-94, waving at the Mars Cheese Castle, to root for the Cubs. There is never any shortage of Brewers fans scalping tickets to Cubs games in Milwaukee so they can make money off Chicagoans, and the playoffs only increase the asking price. They hope to get enough to offset part of the price of the World Series tickets they expect to use.
Brewers owner Mark Attanasio has to know he has no chance of preventing the surge of Cubs fans crossing the border to try to will their team to another win, as they did in Game 3 of the wild-card series clincher against the San Diego Padres in what was the loudest game at Wrigley Field in eight years, shaking the press box.
When Attanasio was asked Friday what he could do to keep it a home-field advantage for the Brewers, he went into a soliloquy about their attendance and local TV ratings, avoiding the question.
‘”If Cubs fans want to come see their team, I’m sure they’ll figure out how to do that,” he said. “And I’m sure our fans will figure out how to go to Wrigley Field.”
Getting to Wrigley Field is not the problem. Affording the high prices of the scalped tickets is. The Cubs won’t get a 50-50 split here, but they can make up for it by being louder that their peers. The Cubs offense will probably dictate that, and the Cubs no doubt will need more hitting than they did in the three games against the Padres, against whom they scored six runs and had a combined 35 strikeouts. The roof at American Family Field is expected to be open for Game 1.
Some believe this rivalry has become so big it has overtaken the Cubs’ longtime rivalry with the St. Louis Cardinals. Or maybe not.
“I think Cubs-Cardinals has so much history, so it’s hard to say,” Hoerner said. “But in recent years the games have definitely been intense.”
The Counsell factor, and the first postseason meeting between the teams, should add to that intensity this week.
It’s a matchup made in heaven for baseball writers, bartenders and brothers-in-law.