WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.—While in New York to accept the National League MVP award in the winter following the 2018 season, Christian Yelich chose to make an unusual detour: He visited the Major League Baseball headquarters in Manhattan to meet with the newly reorganized marketing department.

Just six months earlier, commissioner Rob Manfred created a bit of controversy when he appeared to blame Mike Trout, the sport’s best player, for his relatively low public profile off the field. “Player marketing requires one thing for sure—the player,” he said then.

Manfred’s comments caused a stir, but they touched on a critical point: When it comes to elevating its superstars into national and global icons, baseball continues to struggle. LeBron James has close to 59 million followers on Instagram. Odell Beckham Jr. has 14 million. No active baseball player has even crossed the 2 million threshold. A Trout-focused MLB campaign last summer ended with the Los Angeles Angels center fielder looking straight into the camera and saying, “I just want to play.”

It all points to a key issue for the future of the game long known as America’s pastime: Baseball needs somebody to emerge as its face. Christian Yelich can take up that mantle.

“You have to have a willingness to put yourself out there,” Yelich said, sitting at a corner table at Starbucks after a workout last month. “Do you want to go do this commercial shoot for six hours? Or do you want to go on vacation with your buddies?”

Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich says he wants ‘to experience everything that comes with a baseball career.’ Photo: Nick Agro for The Wall Street Journal

Yelich has opted for the former, in large part because he considers helping baseball grow in popularity—especially with the sport’s shrinking young audience—part of his responsibility. His life changed forever after he won MVP in his first year after the Milwaukee Brewers traded for him. After establishing himself as a solid up-and-comer with the Miami Marlins, Yelich transformed into arguably the NL’s best player in 2018, a designation only confirmed by a brilliant follow-up in 2019. Over the past two seasons, Yelich leads the majors with a .327 batting average and ranks second with a 1.046 OPS, only behind Trout.


Now Yelich says he wants “to experience everything that comes with a baseball career.” That approach brought him to MLB’s offices a year ago, because he knew it would lead to opportunities to build a platform.

Since then, Yelich has appeared in MLB’s “Let the Kids Play” spot, in which he “predicted” he’d hit 50 home runs in 2019. (He hit 44.) He starred in a “Belli vs. Yeli” commercial alongside Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Cody Bellinger. (Yelich wound up finishing second in the MVP race behind Bellinger.)

National League outfielder Christian Yelich of the Milwaukee Brewers on the red carpet prior to the 2019 MLB All Star Game. Photo: charles leclaire/Reuters

He sat for an interview with GQ and posed nude in ESPN’s Body Issue, the only baseball player to do so last year. He appeared as himself in an episode of “Magnum P.I.” in March and wore a Dior suit at a red-carpet event at the All-Star Game in July after working with a professional stylist. Essentially, Yelich developed an image more similar to an NBA or NFL star than a baseball player—exactly what MLB has long desired.

“It just went to show how he was very willing to showcase a different side of who he is off the field,” said Barbara McHugh, MLB’s senior vice president for marketing.


Yelich acknowledges that baseball lags behind the other sports in this realm, a problem that has raised doubts about the MLB’s commitment to elevating its players into crossover celebrities in the popular culture. But he doesn’t blame the league. “MLB has been making the effort,” Yelich said. “I can say for a fact that they are because I’m one of the guys who does a lot of stuff with them.”

Instead, Yelich says the culture of baseball sometimes discourages players from revealing their personalities on a broad stage.

“In baseball you’re going to suck a lot. It’s hard to be boisterous and robust and put yourself out there and have this swagger and this demeanor because it’s a humbling sport—you fail so much,” Yelich said. “It’s hard for guys to have that persona.”

Yelich, 28, says all of this at a crucial time for himself and a precarious moment for the industry, as he prepares to begin his third spring training with the Brewers next week. The last image of Yelich playing was him limping off the field at Marlins Park on Sept. 10 after fouling a ball off his right leg. The incident resulted in a fractured kneecap that ended his season and likely cost him a second consecutive MVP.

Milwaukee Brewers' Christian Yelich, third from left, sits in the dugout during the 2019 NL wild-card game. Photo: Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

He watched from the dugout last October as the Brewers lost a heartbreaker to the Washington Nationals in the NL wild card game. It didn’t help matters that the Nationals scored the winning run when Trent Grisham—stationed in Yelich’s customary right field—committed an error on a bouncing ball. All winter long, fans inundated Yelich’s social media accounts with messages saying that if he had been out there, the Brewers would have won.


“It’s going to be the natural reaction, because that’s just how sports works,” Yelich said. “There’s no telling that I don’t miss that ball and I’m the one taking the heat for it. That’s why I felt really bad, because it’s really unfair to him.”

Yelich says doctors cleared him to resume normal activity around Thanksgiving, and he will have no limitations this spring training—a piece of good news in what has been a difficult period in baseball. The Houston Astros cheating scandal that has prompted the firing of a general manager and three field managers has overshadowed an otherwise exciting off-season replete with enormous free-agent contracts.

Christian Yelich is seeking to rebound in 2020 after he fractured his kneecap in September. Photo: Nick Agro for The Wall Street Journal

The Astros saga has not only hurt baseball, but it also has put unwanted attention on Yelich and the Brewers. Milwaukee’s general manager, David Stearns, previously served as the assistant GM under fired Houston executive Jeff Luhnow. Though Stearns and the Brewers haven’t been accused of stealing signs, Yelich says his Twitter mentions have been filled with fans trying to discredit his success for that reason.

The way Yelich sees it, those kinds of interactions are simply the flip side to his decision to fill the role as an ambassador for baseball in the public eye. It’s a trade off he’s willing to make—especially because, he insists, his numbers haven’t been aided by any clapping, whistling, buzzers, garbage can banging or any other form of illegal sign-stealing.


“There’s a reason why nobody’s pointing a finger at the Brewers being like, ‘Oh these guys do this,’” Yelich said. “It’s because we don’t.”

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Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com