It’s All in the Seams: A Lesson from the Milwaukee Brewers

Despite what you may have seen on a T-shirt, baseball is not life. Neither is football or hockey or, for that matter, literature or painting.

Only life is life.

Still, there are invaluable life lessons we can take away from all of these endeavors, and I want to take this moment to reflect on a few of them.

You see, my beloved Milwaukee Brewers just won their first World Series, so I’ve been thinking a lot about baseball lately, and I’m pretty sure the entire world would be a better place if it were more like a baseball game.

A Particular Brand of Baseball

Actually, thinking about baseball is not something I do only when my team is chasing a title. I have passed a lot of time with the American pastime over the past 50 or so years. I grew up playing in my backyard and later in my best friend’s back yard and on many proper diamonds, including one where my team won the city tournament in Indianapolis.

I cut my teeth as a reader not on adventure novels by Robert Louis Stevenson—those came later—but on books about baseball. The first book I bought with my own money was an autobiography by Ron LeFlore, who became a successful Major League player after serving time in prison.

Baseball, in short, is not my life, but it certainly has been a big part of it.

The Brewers play a particular brand of baseball, as you may know. As Manager Pat Murphy put it after his team swept the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers—the team of Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and other superstars—in the playoffs, "They may have a bunch of Hall of Famers, but we've got a bunch of gamers. And the gamers won this week.”

The Brewers find ways to win. They don’t hit a lot of homers, but they put the bat on the ball, steal bases, play extraordinary defense, and shut down batters with some dominant pitchers.

Another key to their success, I believe, is something that most of us rarely see because it happens in the dugout or clubhouse, even outside the stadium.

This is the something that can make the entire world a better place to live.

Seams

One of my favorite moments of the 2026 season came before the World Series, even before the playoffs, and had nothing to do with a walk-off hit or a dramatic strikeout. Third baseman Joey Ortiz, a lesser-known Brewer on a team of lesser-known players, went deep into the hole, scooped up a grounder, did a 360 as his momentum carried him around, and threw out the batter at first. It was an impressive defensive play, but that’s not the story for me.

Immediately after the play, I saw the pitcher, 24-year-old phenom Jacob Misiorowski (“the Miz”) smiling, and not just smiling, but smiling in a combination of disbelief and faith. His face seemed to say, “I can’t believe he made that play, but of course he made it. He’s Joey Ortiz.” Maybe he was also thinking, “Man, am I blessed to be part of this team.” After all, pitchers ultimately are the ones held accountable for the runs scored in a game and even, to some degree, for outcomes of the entire games. They are literally assigned wins and losses. When Ortiz made that play, he made life better for his pitcher.

I know “teamwork” is a cliche, but it’s real, and it matters, as you know if you have ever been part of a great team, whether in sports or another endeavor (as I have been in my job at IU Kokomo). It works especially well when the members of the team also embrace their relationships off the diamond or outside the office.

After the Brewers won the World Series, the Miz said, “We’re just a group of friends playing sports.”  I’ve spent a lot of time watching and playing baseball, reading about it, and listening to commentary, and I’ve never heard anyone put it that way. It wasn’t just a throwaway line, either. Christian Yelich, who was named the team’s first captain before the playoffs, said, “Everybody's friends, and we all hang out together.”

The Brewers—like the baseballs they hit, throw, and catch—are held together by seams.

Now, before you give up on this column as the oozings of a sappy Brewers fan, consider this thought:

What if all of us—employees and managers, men and women, Americans and Colombians and Chinese and Somalis, people of all religions and ideologies and races and backgrounds—could see ourselves as friends working together for the same goals? I know we often see our goals as different, but many of the things we seek—the most important ones if you ask me—are exactly the same for just about everyone: love, hope, safety, security, health, wellness, and the best possible future for our children. If we can agree on these things, can’t we also work together with our friends to achieve them?

Diversity on the Diamond

There’s another lesson we can take from the Brewers and indeed from sports in general. Let me reflect on another favorite moment from the 2026 season. With apologies to my friends who are fans of the Chicago Cubs, I want to take us back to the division race between these two rivals. In one of the most dramatic games of the regular season, the Brewers and the Cubs reached the ninth inning tied 1-1. Chicago scored two runs in the top of the ninth, going up 3-1, but Milwaukee answered with two runs of their own in the bottom of the ninth, sending the game to extra innings.

Finally, in the bottom of the tenth, a 21-year-old rookie, Luis Lara, won the game for the Brewers with a walk-off hit. Again, for me, the real story was not the hit, but the reaction. The first of Lara’s teammates to reach him for the victory celebration was Sal Frelick, who had been on first base. Frelick, clearly ecstatic, started hugging Lara and then stuck with him as a mass of Brewers crowded around Lara and followed him into the outfield.

Lara is black. Frelick is white. Lara is from Venezuela. Frelick is from Massachusetts. Lara replaced Frelick in right field after Frelick was injured and played so well that Frelick may have had cause to wonder whether he would get his starting position back.

None of this mattered to the teammates celebrating their victory.

Despite all the impressive work that has been done over the past century and more, racism and xenophobia are still alive in the United States. There’s no doubt both have diminished since the 1800s, but they haven’t disappeared.

Baseball, like soccer and basketball and other team sports, is played in an environment where it’s hard for such forms of intolerance to thrive. For one thing, athletes on teams, especially baseball players, spend a lot of time together. Spring training begins in February, and the regular season doesn’t end until late September or even early October. The playoffs tack on additional weeks for the teams who keep winning. Teams play 162 games, or about six games a week, over the course of the regular season. Of course, they are also working out, practicing, traveling, and just living together.

Getting to know people different from us is one of the keys to defeating intolerance. That’s one of the benefits of integration, after all. Ever since Jackie Robinson famously broke the “color line” when he began playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, some (and eventually all) Major League baseball players have lived and worked in integrated environments.

Then there’s that sense of purpose: the teammates—black and white and brown, North American and South American and Caribbean and Asian (and European and Australian)—are all after the same thing, and they’re more likely to get it when they are surrounded by talent. Any serious baseball fan will tell you that some of the best baseball talent in the world comes from Latin America and Asia. Why wouldn’t you want players from these places on your team? You want to win, don’t you?

Baseball games aren’t the only things worth winning, though. There are scientific breakthroughs, medical treatments, technical innovations, profound artistic achievements, and other victories that help all of us thrive. We need talent to achieve these wins, and talent in science and medicine and technology and art, just like talent in sports, comes from a wide variety of backgrounds. Who shouldn’t want contributors from these backgrounds? You want to thrive, don’t you?

If we want a better world, we can start by imagining it as a giant baseball diamond, where all of us are just a bunch of friends living life.