His favorite cities, music and more
In his seventh season with the Milwaukee Brewers – my, how time flies! – we've learned a ton about Christian Yelich the baseball player.
What we don't know as much about is what makes Yelich, 32, tick. Or, what his tastes are regarding things away from the diamond.
Recently, Yelich provided some insight into the person wearing the uniform courtesy of this Q&A with the Journal Sentinel.
Q: This is your seventh year living in Milwaukee during the baseball season. What have you grown to like about the city?
I think people don't realize we don't have a ton of time to have a life in a baseball season because most of our days are here. But I enjoy the summers. I don't really go to Summerfest, but you can feel the energy in the city with Summerfest, us playing, the nice weather. You see people out by the lake. And I like just feeling that kind of stuff. The Third Ward. Just parts like that. Having the weather warm up and be a little nicer and getting into the rhythm of the season, it's really a nice part of the year for me, personally.
Q: On the flip side, what is your favorite city or cities to visit when you're on the road?
I like New York. Miami is a cool one, especially for me having spent some time there (with the Marlins). Going back home to L.A. is cool. I like playing at Dodger Stadium just because I grew up there, went there as a kid. I really like going to Boston and just getting to experience new places. It's one of the cool perks of this job, is getting to see cities that I probably wouldn't have come to if I wasn't playing baseball. But you learn a lot about it and see cool places.
Q: What's your favorite kind of music?
I listen to a little bit of everything. Honestly, it just depends on the mood of the day or the situation, but I'd say probably country music is my favorite genre. It's probably what I listen to the most, but it's kind of like, mood-dependent or what's going on.
Q: What's the best concert you've ever attended?
Ed Sheeran. Actually we went last year, eight of us after we played the Rays in Tampa, a day game. He was playing that night at the football stadium that was right by our hotel, so a bunch of us got tickets and ended up heading over there. It was a really, really good show. Just, like, the whole vibe, it was awesome. He's super-talented and just seeing the way that he did everything – he's basically a one-man band and I think that's really cool.
Q: Do you have a favorite food?
I think that switches all the time, too. But a good steakhouse is cool. Sushi places. I really like trying new restaurants when we go to different cities and kind of just look up, 'What's the place to go to?' and may be what they're known for. Miami, New York, Chicago – all those kinds of places the restaurant options are pretty extensive so you can kind of go try anything. So, I kind of like doing that. And I'm not a super-picky eater, so I'll try a little bit of everything. You go to Arizona, San Diego, you go to Mexican food places. Just kind of all over the place.
Q: If you weren't playing baseball, what do you think you'd be doing?
Honestly, I went into baseball without a Plan B. I wanted to put everything that I had into this and try to make it to the major leagues and be successful here. And I didn't want to have a Plan B that you could be like, 'Well, if this doesn't work out, I can always just do this.'
I was like, 'I'll figure it out if I have to if (baseball) doesn't work out.' But you're in the minor leagues trying to get here, the level of commitment that's required to be the best version of yourself and make it here, it's pretty extensive. And if you're kind of looking on the other side of the fence, like, 'Oh, well, maybe I'll just go do something else,' then it makes it that much harder.
So, I never wanted to look at it that way. I felt like I would always know within a few years whether I was going to be able to do it or not. But in that time, I wanted to really just put everything I had into it and try to become the best player I could be. I'm pretty fortunate that I never had to (come up with Plan B) at some point. I'll be fairly young in life when I'm done doing this. I'd like to keep doing something after this, but I don't know what it'll be.
Q: What's the best piece of advice you've ever received, and who gave it to you?
Andy Haines (former Brewers hitting coach and current Pittsburgh Pirates hitting coach), obviously me and Andy have a great relationship and have been together for a bunch of different phases and parts of my career. He was one of the first people that I met in professional baseball, fresh out of high school as my low-A, high-A manager and it was just kind of talking about the scope of the major-league season and putting it all in perspective.
I don't know if it was really advice or more of a perspective check, but it takes a really long time to have a good season and it takes a really long time to have a bad season. And so, just focus on the daily and keep going no matter what's happening. Just keep going because you can't have a good season in a month. You can't have a bad season in a month. You can't even do it in two months or three months – personally as a player, and as a team. You can't do it in baseball. Nothing happens quick.
So, it's all about the process. It's all about just saying locked in and getting the most out of yourself daily and then doing that again the next day and the next day and the next day, because that's what it requires here to be successful as a player as a team.
And I think that's really great advice because, often times as players, you want things to happen fast, especially when the season starts. Everybody wants to get out to a great start, teams want to get out to a great start, but the reality of it is that's why it's so hard to have a good year – because it takes six months to do, team-wise and individually. I just think that's a really good perspective check because it kind of just focuses more on your process than it does on your results.
Q: Do you have a pet peeve?
As a player, you want to see people prepared to play the game. You need to know what's going on, what you're doing at this level, and if you want to be on a good team, you need to play a certain way and you need to have certain kinds of players on the team.
It's taking accountability for your career and for others on the team by being prepared, knowing where you're supposed to be, what you're supposed to be doing and how you're supposed to be doing it. Who cares what the results are because the game is hard and it's going to be good times and bad times, but you should always be prepared.
Winning teams conduct themselves in a certain way, and there's a certain standard. If you're on playing a good team, you have to live up to the standards. If you want to be on a bad team, go do what those teams do. And that's kind of what we've built here. We don't really settle for less. So, that's the standard and what we hold everybody accountable here for – myself included. And that's just how it is.
If you're not doing that, it pisses a lot of people off around here and that's one of the things that I don't have a lot of patience for and not a lot of others around here do, either.
Q: Who is the most famous person in your contacts?
I don't know if I want to say. Bob Uecker. I've been very fortunate to meet some very cool people through baseball and sports and I think that's been a really interesting part of the journey, getting to meet a lot of people that you never thought you would get to meet. We'll go with Bob Uecker.
Q: What ever happened to Roxane (a fan who said Yelich's appearance in ESPN's Body Issue was distasteful)?
I have no idea. I'm not entirely sure. We still don't know who that was or what they were doing. But that was just a fun moment.
I don't have any hard feelings about it and just had fun with it. I kind of knew when I was doing all that Body Issue stuff that there's going to be some people that didn't like it or whatever. You can't please everybody; live your life and do things that you want to do and who cares what other people think? But there is no animosity about that from my end, and I think it was just good fun.
You know, we're still talking about it all these years later. So, it's obviously fun. And hopefully everybody kind of had a good laugh about that.