CLAREMONT, Calif. - Former Claremont-Mudd-Scripps baseball coach Pat Murphy will return to Southern California this week as the manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, when his team takes on the Dodgers in the National League Championship series on Thursday and Friday. 

The Brewers advanced to the NLCS with a 3-2 series win over the Cubs, and will head to Los Angeles hoping to come back from a 2-0 deficit to make it to the World Series for the second time in franchise history. The first was in 1982, which was the same year that Murphy began his baseball coaching career at Maryville College in Tennessee. 

After two seasons at Maryville, Murphy had a stop at Florida Atlantic before then serving as the head coach for Claremont-Mudd-Scripps for two seasons in 1986 and 1987. In his first season at CMS, he led the Stags to the SCIAC title with a 15-3 league record, the program's first since 1975, as well as a No. 10 national ranking in Division III. 

Murphy left CMS after the 1987 season to take over the head coaching position at the University of Notre Dame, where he led the Fighting Irish to the NCAA Regional Finals in three straight seasons from 1992-94. He then took over the head job at Arizona State, where he made four College World Series appearances and was named the National Coach of the Year by Baseball America. 

Murphy is in his second season at the helm of the Brewers, after winning the National League Manager of the Year in 2024, when he led Milwaukee to the division title in his debut campaign. He also was the interim manager of the San Diego Padres for one year in 2015.