Pat Murphy FaceTimed Chris Russo After the Brewers Declined His Interview Request

Pat Murphy did not decline Chris Russo’s interview request. His club did, in five minutes, by email, and Murphy only found out when the texts started arriving. The Milwaukee Brewers manager told the story twice on Thursday, at World Series Media Day and on Foul Territory, and both versions end the same way: he told his PR man he did not want to say no, the club called Russo on the spot, and the interview Russo had been shouting about on First Take happened by FaceTime.

What actually happened between Russo and the Brewers?

A ten-minute request met a five-minute refusal. After Milwaukee swept the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the National League pennant, Russo had the producer of his SiriusXM radio show contact the Brewers, he explained on First Take on Wednesday. He wanted Murphy for ten minutes and said he would tape it at any time of day. The Brewers emailed back within five minutes saying they could not accommodate the request because Murphy’s schedule was too busy, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Russo then did what Russo does, at volume, on ESPN’s biggest debate show, and the clip went viral. It is the second Murphy media story of this postseason, after Murphy cursed Jackson Merrill during his own live in-game interview earlier in October, and the two could not be more different in tone.

Why did a five-minute email turn into a First Take rant?

Because Russo read it as a judgment on his standing, and he had receipts he thought proved it. “I’m a Hall of Famer. I’m on First Take,” he said, pointing to his 2022 induction into the Radio Hall of Fame. His sharper complaint was comparative: Murphy had found time for Colin Cowherd’s Fox Sports Radio show and for a SiriusXM segment with Jim Gray whose other guests were football players Drew Brees and Matthew Stafford. Football guys got the baseball manager during World Series week, and the baseball lifer got a form email. ClutchPoints’ account of the rant adds the line that explains the sting underneath it: Russo had opened by belittling the club itself, saying these are the Milwaukee Brewers, not the Yankees or the Dodgers. A small-market team that has spent this month being treated as a curiosity, as Murphy’s gamers, not Hall of Famers line after the sweep made plain, was never going to enjoy hearing that from the man asking for its manager’s time.

How did Murphy find out, given he is not on social media?

By text, in fragments, and his telling of that part is the funniest detail in the story. “I’m not on social media, Twizzler, or Instacart, whatever,” Murphy said in the Foul Territory version reported by ClutchPoints. “I get blasted on my phone. But sure enough, I get texts, ‘Great job, Russo is a jerk.’ I am like, ‘What are they talking about?’” In the Media Day version, carried by Yardbarker via Bill Shaikin’s recording, somebody sent him a clip and he watched only the start of it: it said he was a Hall of Famer and that Murphy had shut him down, and that was all he saw. A manager who prepares for a World Series the way Murphy prepared for the NLCS, benching his captain Christian Yelich for Game 1, learned about a national media row from a partial clip and a pile of texts, then went and found his PR man.

What did Murphy do about it?

He reversed his own club’s decision on the spot. Murphy said he asked Mike Vassallo, the Brewers’ PR man, what was going on and was told the request had been turned down immediately. His reasons for undoing it were practical as much as polite. In the Foul Territory telling, he said he did not want to tell the guy no. In the Media Day telling, he added a competitive motive: he wanted to go on because Russo had put out a bunch of bad things about the Brewers. Either way the method was the same. “We called him right then and we did the show right then. We FaceTimed,” Murphy said. No scheduling, no producer negotiation, no ten-minute slot negotiated eight days out. The access Russo could not get through the front door in five minutes, he got through the manager’s phone in one call.

What did Murphy think of the Russo he actually got?

That the performance ends when the microphone is off, and he said so with a grin. “He was really, really soft and nice with me,” Murphy said. “I’m like, the guy’s not even being himself. Where’s that drunk uncle I had, you know what I mean?” The Journal Sentinel adds that the rant’s online reception ran the same way: social media was not on Russo’s side. The episode now sits alongside the week’s other off-field Brewers story, the letter Bob Uecker’s family released through the club, as part of a World Series buildup in which Milwaukee’s manager has been the most quotable man in the sport. It also carries a small lesson about how access actually works in a Series week. The club’s gatekeeping produced the rant; the manager’s phone produced the interview. Both were Brewers decisions, twenty-four hours apart.

What happens next?

The baseball, starting Friday. Game 1 of the World Series is at American Family Field on Friday, October 23, against Tampa Bay, and Murphy’s media obligations from here are the standard pregame and postgame sessions rather than favours. Russo still has his daily show and a First Take seat in which to grade the interview he finally got, and whether he returns to the subject now that he has had his ten minutes is the open media question. The ticket and seat arguments that follow a small-market club into a Series, like the Brewers’ Timeless Ticket dispute that the club apologised for this week, tend to fade once the games start. This one should too, because the man at the centre of it has already given the story its ending: he picked up the phone.