Jon McCabe has a 22-year-old ketchup stain on his jersey, and he’s damn proud of it.
McCabe and thousands of others who filtered through the turnstiles at American Family Field on April 25 to watch the Milwaukee Brewers take on the Pittsburgh Pirates, threw on their favorite jersey before heading to the ballpark, the majority reading “Chourio” or “Yelich” or “Contreras” or “Turang” on the back.
But not McCabe’s.
The white synthetic polyester jersey – the exact look that screams mid-aughts – features lettering on the front and trim along the sides in red, but it’s what’s on the back that makes it a collector’s dream: “Kolb” and the number 41.
McCabe collected Brewers All-Star jerseys as a kid growing up in Wisconsin, from Carlos Lee to Geoff Jenkins, but has kept only one into adulthood. It’s this one, a Dan Kolb jersey from his lone All-Star Game appearance in 2004.
It’s a conversation piece. It’s unique. It’s perhaps the pinnacle for eliciting nostalgia for fans of a certain late-millennial age over bad Brewers teams that somehow, someway still got them to fall in love with the game.
And it’s got a stain on it that’s old enough to legally drink.
“I like the stains,” McCabe said. “The first week I had this, I went to get a hot dog and someone shoved down on the ketchup thing and ketchup sprayed all over it. It gives it some character.”
McCabe may own bragging rights for the most unique worn at a Brewers game all year, but it’s not the only one with meaning.
There’s a reason jerseys continue to be the most popular item at team shops.
They’re a physical representation for someone to tell his or her story about their fandom.
And collectively, they can tell a tale about fans on the whole.
Over three homestands this spring, the Journal Sentinel counted and recorded more than 2,000 jerseys at American Family Field to see just what, exactly, we can learn about the Brewers community from them.
Some fans seek obscurity in their jersey choices
McCabe’s is far from the lone obscure jersey you will see at a game.
While the vast majority of fans want to wear a jersey representing their favorite player, there are those devoted to an entirely different gambit: Deliberately buying a jersey of a guy who wasn’t anyone’s favorite player.
Within the clan of jersey-laden fans is a small phylum of those that chase threads that are all about Remembering Some Guys.
The Brewers sell game-worn jerseys, both intermittently at community foundation sales throughout the season or in batches at the annual clubhouse sale in December, of players no longer with the team. While you may occasionally stumble upon an authentic Ryan Braun or Jackson Chourio (and if you do, it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg) at one of these sales, the far more common find is that of a random reliever who made nine appearances and had an ERA north of six.
In our sample, we saw jerseys belonging to former Brewers Ethan Small, Jose Capellan, Angel Perdomo, Keon Broxton, Dinelson Lamet, Miguel Sanchez, Luis Jimenez, Ed Sedar, Ramon Flores, Brewer Hicklen, Damien Magnifico, Alex Claudio and Hoby Milner.
Matthew Zaperski of West Bend is one of the fans who collects these, buying them in swaths. The prize of his anthology is the complete collection Bat Boy jerseys. He owns a game-worn jersey in five of the Brewers’ color variations from last season, but he has plenty more in his stock, too, including multiple Chris Hook jerseys.
How much, exactly, has this run him?
“For my wife, probably about $100,” he said. “For you? A couple thousand.”
Travis Christopherson of Eau Claire has a collection that isn’t quite as expansive, though his favorite – a 1992 Ed Núñez batting-practice jersey – is just as unique. On this particular evening, though, he’s purposefully wearing his 2003 game-worn Nick Neugebauer spring training jersey as an elite throwback connection to that night’s starting pitcher.
“[Jacob] Misiorowski is number 32,” Christopherson said. “People have to remember that years ago Neugebauer was the flame-throwing No. 32 prospect back in the day. We hope for better luck for Jacob.”
The boldest call of them all
There weren’t as many Cubs jerseys as anecdotal memory served – only one each of Sammy Sosa, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Anthony Rizzo – but even those Northside loyalists weren’t as brave as one particular Brewers fan.
Over three homestands’ worth of jersey-watching, only one of Craig Counsell’s was spotted.
Yes, the winningest manager in franchise history, a Whitefish Bay native, a lifelong Brewer as a fan, player and manager until he went to the Chicago Cubs, is now represented on fans’ backs at the park the same amount as 2015 cup-of-coffee infielder Luis Jimenez, hulking southpaw Angel Perdomo and, for some reason, Sidney Crosby, who famously plays an entirely different sport in an entirely different city.
So, no, Brewers fans on the whole still haven’t quite gotten over it three seasons later.
But one man – one brave, brave man – has.
“Well, he was my favorite player growing up,” said Thomas Ibric of Madison, a lifelong Brewers fan who doesn’t hold it against the team’s former skipper for taking a job with their biggest rival. “Beyond that, I mean, I don’t hate him or anything.”
The most-common jerseys at a Brewers game
Brewers fans always have held a special place in their hearts for beloved players of yesteryear, and there, to be sure, are plenty of Robin Yount and Paul Molitor jerseys still hanging around the concourses.
More than two-thirds of jerseys, though, are of players currently on the team, a strong sign of how successful the Brewers have been in recent years.
Here are the most-spotted jerseys by name on the back our sample of 2,114 – and, yes, Christian Yelich still reigns supreme, although not by much.
OK, but what about jersey types?
Below is the breakdown of how many of each of the current Brewers’ jersey types – counting only their five current looks plus the “Brew Crew” city connects and road grays that went out of the rotation this year – were worn.
Unsurprisingly, the Brewers’ primary home look is most popular, while the relative lack of people sporting the new blue alternate road jerseys was a bit unexpected.
The team’s 2022-25 “Brew Crew” city connects remain far more popular at the games than the opinion-splitting new “Wisco” look, but that isn’t altogether shocking considering the former were sold for four years while the latter have been in stores for less than two months.
Tallying up which players are represented on the Wisco jerseys gives us an idea of which players’ jerseys are being snatched up at the most right now.
Chourio is tops among the Wiscos at 20, while Misiorowski and Turang are next at 15 and 14, respectively. Yelich, with 10 Wiscos counted, is behind Contreras (12) and tied with Frelick (10).
Filed under Unexpected in this category were one apiece for Quinn Priester, Joey Ortiz and Jesús Made, who of course is only at Class AA.
Most-common player-color combos
Chourio still trails Yelich for the unofficial mantle of most popular player by our count, but he does have the two most common jersey types of any single player.
Here are the 15 most-common jerseys by specific type.
That’s a lot of giveaways, isn’t it?
Yes, we counted promotional giveaways because they’re still jerseys even if you don’t spend $130 and upwards on them. (While we’re on the subject, yes, we counted knock-off jerseys, as well. And some of them were comically bad.)
In total, 13% of all jerseys were some sort of giveaway from previous years, from the common (Chourio and Contreras) to the rare (Luis Urías soccer-themed, which you can get for $20 or less on eBay).
While Chourio’s from 2025 and Contreras’ from 2024 – two of the more authentic-looking team giveaway jerseys you’ll find, even complete with the Northwestern Mutual ad patch on the left sleeve – are by far and away the most common ones, the latter accounts for 41.8% of all his jerseys, while Chourio’s is only 22.3%.
Frelick’s football jersey from last year accounts for nearly one-third (32.9%) of his total jerseys at the park, though that number is sure to increase when his “Slidin’ Sal” jersey gets passed out June 6.
The other most-tallied giveaways included Giannis basketball jerseys (37), Yelich’s patriotic-themed (26) and Robin Yount (19, fittingly).
Here’s what else we saw
When you count up more than 2,000 jerseys, you’re bound to see plenty of note. Below is the best of the rest.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: These were jerseys fans wore at Milwaukee Brewers games and what we learned
Reporting by Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
