Confronting Brewers general manager David Stearns on the field at Miller Park recently, I asked if the stories about a misspent youth were true.

Did Stearns once consider joining the dark side and becoming a sportswriter?

“It could’ve happened,” he said.

That’s a scary thought, I told him.

“I still might be one day,” he replied.

It’s doubtful the 33-year-old Stearns will be looking for a job in the newspaper business anytime soon.

He has done quite well in his three years running the Brewers, inheriting a team that lost 94 games in 2015 and putting together the puzzle pieces that led to 96 wins and a National League Central title this year.

After going 7-0 in the final week of the season and beating the Cubs 3-1 in Monday’s tiebreaker game at Wrigley Field, the Brewers are now battling the Rockies in an NL Division Series.

It’s a rags-to-riches saga, with a bit of drama added Wednesday when Stearns’ wife, Whitney, gave birth to their daughter, Nora, on the eve of the playoff opener.

And to think, Stearns could have been covering this story instead of living it out.

“I’ve always enjoyed writing, even as a kid, and I’ve always loved sports,” he said. “It made sense to explore what the combination of those two things might look like. As my career evolved and I got different opportunities to work for clubs, I really began to enjoy and value that side of things, the competitiveness and the wins and losses. That’s what led me to pursue the team side of things rather than the journalism side.”

Stearns began his baseball career as an intern with the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Class A affiliate of the Mets, and then with the Pirates’ Class A affiliate in Bradenton, Fla. Former Pirates GM Dave Littlefield brought him up to work in the team’s baseball operations department, and Stearns proceeded to jump to various jobs — with the Arizona Fall League, back to the Mets, to Major League Baseball’s central office, to the Indians and eventually to the Astros, where GM Jeff Luhnow hired him as an assistant during the team’s rebuild.

The Brewers made Stearns their GM after the 2015 season, and the fresh-faced 30-year-old went to work trying to change the clubhouse culture and compete with the Cubs and Cardinals in the NL Central.

“I’ve been incredibly fortunate throughout my career,” Stearns said. “I’ve had bosses everywhere I’ve been who’ve taken time to teach me and allow me to make mistakes — sometimes big mistakes — and grow from those mistakes. I recognize that’s not normal.”

Ivy league to big leagues

Dylan Buell / Getty In David Stearns' three seasons as general manager, the Brewers have gone from a 94-loss team in 2015 to a 96-win NL Central champion in 2018. In David Stearns' three seasons as general manager, the Brewers have gone from a 94-loss team in 2015 to a 96-win NL Central champion in 2018. (Dylan Buell / Getty)

It’s the proverbial Cinderella story, as Bill Murray would say, and all because Stearns ditched his dream of becoming an ink-stained wretch. He had started out writing sports as an intern at the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Ariz., and worked for his college newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, covering the football and men’s squash teams and writing a column.

Stearns’ journey through the baseball ranks was similar to the one taken by Cubs President Theo Epstein, who worked his way up the ladder to become GM of the Red Sox in 2003 at age 29. Epstein, coincidentally, also was a sportswriter for his college paper, the Yale Daily News, and in 1993 called for legendary Yale football coach Carmen Cozza to step down, stirring it up like a seasoned pro.

Stearns insisted he was not a “ripper” at the Crimson, always looking for the controversial angle.

“I grew up in New York City, so I grew up around plenty of columnists and (writers) that stirred stuff up,” he said. “I just loved writing and being around the athletic events. What I didn’t enjoy, frankly, was the back-office stuff — the layout and all the stuff you have to do to put the paper up. I tried to stay away from that.”

Epstein is 44 now, a grizzled lifer on the back side of a Hall of Fame career, while Stearns is part of the next generation of analytically oriented, college-educated baseball executives. The GM position has drastically evolved over the years from the old-boys network to the Ivy League network. Highly educated business majors have a much better chance at running a team these days than former players or managers.

Stearns credited Epstein, Mets GM Sandy Alderson (Dartmouth) and A’s GM David Forst (Harvard) as game-changers in the industry.

“What all of these talented executives with slightly different backgrounds did was allow people like me to walk up and see that people with my background are welcome in the game,” Stearns said. “Now that’s obvious, but I imagine when Theo went through his apprenticeships and growing through the game, it wasn’t obvious. For him and others like him to be able to take the step up and have that success, I certainly do think it made life easier for me and people like me to get a foothold in the game.”

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