MILWAUKEE — Team captains are not common in Major League Baseball. But on Saturday, the Milwaukee Brewers named Christian Yelich the first captain in franchise history, making him one of only three active captains in the majors.
The Brewers decided in a team meeting prior to its Saturday game against the St. Louis Cardinals to give the honor to Yelich. But Yelich did not want to accept without “sign-off” from another Brewers legend: Robin Yount.
Yelich requested that Yount, who played his entire 20-year career with Milwaukee, sign off on his captaincy before accepting. Yount, a Hall of Famer, was a leader on the only Brewers’ team to make the World Series in 1982.
Yount joined Wisconsin’s Midday News to discuss the conversations he had with Yelich and Brewers Manager Pat Murphy ahead of Saturday’s announcement.
“In all honesty, they certainly didn’t need my approval,” Yount said. “But in saying that, it was very, very humbling to be honest, to think that they would even consider asking me what I thought.”
Yount said the fact that he was asked speaks to the character of this team, calling them a “class act, especially at this time of the season.”
While Yount has not been around the current Brewers team as much as in previous years, he said he got to know Yelich through their mutual friend, Bob Uecker.
“I learned a lot about Christian through the years Ueck was around him,” Yount said. “Ueck spoke of Christian in the highest regard… The team pretty much looked up to him as that guy. And that’s all I needed to hear from somebody that was around him enough.”
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