Selig helped lift Yelich’s spirits
Bud Selig sent the Brewers’ Christian Yelich a touching letter after an injury ended his season in 2019.
PHOENIX – Late last September, Christian Yelich was experiencing one of the low points of his blossoming career, sitting on the sideline with a broken right kneecap, watching his Milwaukee Brewers making a soon-to-besuccessful surge to the National League’s second wild-card playoff berth.
The superstar outfielder tried his best not to feel sorry for himself, but his spirits understandably were waning. Then came an unexpected pick-me-up from a surprising source.
Roger Caplinger, the Brewers’ longtime medical director, approached Yelich at Miller Park and said he had a letter for him. When he saw the author, his eyes brightened and a smile started to grow across his angular face.
The letter was from Bud Selig, founder of the Brewers and later the secondlongest tenured commissioner in major league history. Still serving as the game’s commissioner emeritus from his downtown office, Selig wanted Yelich to know what he meant to the club and community while coming to terms with the injury that ended a second straight brilliant season in Milwaukee.
“It was pretty cool,” Yelich said. “It was maybe a week or so after I got hurt. I looked at this letter and it had the MLB logo on it. When I saw who wrote it, I was very surprised. The things he said were really awesome.”
Selig knew Yelich was down in the dumps after fouling a pitch off his right kneecap and fracturing it but he wanted new face of the Brewers franchise to know what he meant to both club and community.
“I wrote him a letter because it meant so much to me to watch how he plays and how he conducts himself,” said Selig,
Christian Yelich hits a single during the Brewers’ spring training game Sunday. He received a touching letter from Bud Selig last season.
who paid a visit Sunday to American Family Fields of Phoenix to visit with owner Mark Attanasio, members of the club and take in the Brewers’ game against the Los Angeles Angels.
“On the field, he has been magnificent. Off the field, he has been better. He is this generation’s Robin Yount. And that’s the highest compliment I can pay anybody.”
Selig, who has been dealing with a brutal lower back issue and resulting sciatic nerve pain, received treatment last weekend at the team’s state-of-theart medical department at their training complex. He made time to visit with Yelich, whom he knew the Brewers were trying to tie up with a long-term contract extension.
A few days later, word broke of Yelich’s club-record, nine-year, $215 million agreement with the Brewers.
“We had the nicest talk,” Selig said. “It makes me feel wonderful that he liked that letter. It actually took me a couple of days to write it. That’s how much I thought about what I wanted to say.”
Yelich already has framed the letter, which is in safe-keeping, for now, at his mother’s house in Thousand Oaks, California. He did not take lightly the sincerity of the thoughts expressed in it, nor the author’s importance in the Brewers coming to Milwaukee 50 years ago.
“There was a lot of thought behind it,” Yelich said. “I saved it because it meant something to me. I’ve got some things going on back home and whenever I get my life organized, I’ll hang it in a prominent place. It’s not every day you get something like that from someone like him.
“The letter is really nice. The things he said were really awesome. I thanked him when I saw him here. That was the first time I saw him since (getting) the letter. So, it was cool. It meant a lot to me.”