With the Dodgers visiting the Brewers for a three-game series this week, one player opted not to stay at the team hotel—and for a very interesting reason.
While the rest of the club stayed at the historic Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, Mookie Betts opted to stay in an Airbnb. Why? Because the hotel is notorious among big leaguers for being haunted.
“It was a good excuse (not to stay there),” Betts told the Orange County Register’s Bill Plunkett.
“You can tell me what happened after,” he added. “I just don’t want to find out myself.”
The ghost stories might just be an excuse (Betts is sharing the Airbnb with some friends who made the trip to Milwaukee) but he’s not taking any chances. Even though Betts told Plunkett that he doesn’t really believe in ghosts, the hotel’s reputation made it tough to sleep.
“Every noise, I’d be like, ‘Is that something?’” he explained.
The hotel was built in 1893 and its paranormal reputation among ballplayers dates back to 2001, when Adrián Beltré (then playing, coincidentally, with the Dodgers) told Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci that he slept a total of two hours in his three nights in Milwaukee because he was so freaked out by various unexplained phenomena like a knocking at his door and his TV turning on and off by itself. Beltré denied, however, that he had taken his bat to bed, as two teammates had alleged.
In 2008, Carlos Gomez, then with the Twins, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that one night in the hotel his iPod started randomly playing music and vibrating loudly. In 2013, eight players, including Bryce Harper and Giancarlo Stanton, told ESPN The Magazine about their own creepy experiences at the Pfister.
Betts might get creeped out by the hotel but he hasn’t let it impact his play in Milwaukee. His career OPS at home of the Brewers is his third-highest of any ballpark in the majors. But Milwaukee’s isn’t the only haunted hotel in the majors. Players tell similar stories about the Vinoy Renaissance in St. Petersburg, Fla., where teams stay when they’re playing the Rays. Betts’s OPS at Tropicana Field is well below his career mark, so maybe the ghosts are getting to him there. Betts might want to get another Airbnb when the Dodgers visit the Rays at the end of this month.
