When setting a date for hip replacement surgery, Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy made sure to schedule it after the World Series.
What he didn't consider was when the NL Manager of the Year would be announced.
That's why Murphy was in a hospital bed Tuesday night recovering from an operation on his right hip when he became the first skipper from either league to win the award three years in a row.
“I've got nothing to do. I’m just sitting here,” Murphy quipped at the end of a call with reporters.
The award came less than two weeks after the Brewers won their first World Series title, and a day after the manager's surgery in Milwaukee.
“The doctor gave me some dates and I just picked a date one day, and I had no idea that it was going to coincide. I wasn't thinking in those terms," said Murphy, who turns 68 on Nov. 28. “I was just thinking about what we had, task at hand. I mean, I probably picked it a month ago and obviously I picked it after the World Series was done, but I didn’t know we were going to be in the World Series at that time. But I thought it was a safe date to do it.”
Will Venable won AL Manager of the Year after his Chicago White Sox became the first major league team to reach the playoffs following consecutive 100-loss seasons. Only the third of three straight came under Venable, who took over in 2025. Chicago went 84-78 this year.
Balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America was conducted before the postseason, and results were announced Tuesday night.
Milwaukee has won the NL Central in all three years with Murphy as manager after he spent eight seasons on Craig Counsell’s coaching staff. The Brewers led the majors this year with a franchise-record 103 wins during the regular season, then in the playoffs swept the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series and beat Tampa Bay in a five-game World Series.
Murphy survived a heart attack in August 2020 that happened on the day of a Milwaukee workout.
The Brewers play in Major League Baseball’s smallest market and have a payroll in the bottom half of the sport, but have had the best record in the big leagues each of the past two seasons.
After sweeping the NLCS for their first World Series berth since their only other one in 1982, Murphy celebrated by saying the Dodgers had Hall of Famers but his team had gamers.
“I think it’s just a reflection of what our team has done,” Murphy said Tuesday night. “First and foremost is players, hungry players that are willing to live up to certain standards and have a focus and awareness about winning.”
Only three other managers have won the award three times in the same organization. Bobby Cox, one of three four-time winners along with Buck Showalter and Tony La Russa, earned three with the Atlanta Braves (1991, 2004 and 2005). Cox is also the only other back-to-back NL winner.
Terry Francona was a three-time winner with Cleveland (2013, 2016 and 2022), while Dusty Baker won three times with the San Francisco Giants (1993, 1997 and 2000).
Venable, a former big league outfielder, got his first managerial job when the White Sox were coming off 121 losses in 2024, a record for the most since 1900, after 101 losses the previous season. They went 60-102 in Venable’s debut and followed that this season when 19 rookies played and they made the playoffs for the first time since 2021.
“I’m really proud about the playoff appearance because it’s what the players believed from day one, you know, at a time when nobody, certainly nobody outside of our walls, believed that we were a playoff team,” Venable said. “There was real belief internally with our player group that they were a playoff team and beyond that, they were also willing to do the things necessary to turn that into a reality.”
After sweeping Houston in two road games in their AL Wild Card Series, the White Sox had a 2-0 series lead before losing a five-game AL Division Series to Cleveland.
Before he was hired by Chicago, Venable was on manager Bruce Bochy’s staff in Texas and was part of the Rangers’ only World Series title in 2023.
Venable, who played briefly for Murphy with the San Diego Padres in 2015, is the first White Sox manager to win the award since Ozzie Guillen in 2005.
Murphy got 20 of 30 first-place votes and finished with 124 points. Atlanta's Walt Weiss came in second with seven first-place votes and 86 points, while Philadelphia's Don Mattingly was the other NL finalist and came in third. Mattingly got one first-place vote, and San Diego's Craig Stammen got the remaining two.
Venable received 15 of 30 first-place votes and 111 points in the BBWAA balloting. The other AL finalists were two-time winner Kevin Cash of the AL champion Tampa Bay Rays, and Chad Tracy, who took over the Boston Red Sox in April and led them to the playoffs.
Cash was runner-up with 12 first-place votes and 98 points. Tracy got three first-place votes and 47 points.
The AL and NL Cy Young Award winners and Relievers of the Year will be announced Wednesday. MVP winners will be revealed Thursday.
See AP’s full MLB coverage here
FILE - Chicago White Sox's Will Venable waves before Game 3 of baseball's American League Division Series against the Cleveland Guardians Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Melissa Tamez, File)
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Pope Leo XIV urged Argentines to reject the “idols” of money, drugs and pornography and to model their lives on the saints, as he drew an estimated 1 million people to a vigil late Tuesday in the hometown of his predecessor, Pope Francis.
Leo presided over a massive youth vigil at the Monumento de los Españoles, an intersection of Buenos Aires’ grand boulevards that were packed for the nighttime event. It was the same place where an estimated 2.5 million people turned out Monday for Leo's main Mass in Buenos Aires, a record for his still-young pontificate.
In his remarks, Leo urged the young Argentines to “stand firm” and reject the “idols of our time.” He listed the temptations as success at any cost, money, drugs, porn and obsession with appearances, popularity or pleasure.
“Do not bow down before anything that cannot give you life,” Leo said. “And if you have ever fallen, get back up.”
As he did during Mass earlier in the day in the central city of Córdoba, Leo urged the young people to model their lives on saints.
“We are all called to holiness,” he said. “These saints and blesseds have already fulfilled their mission on Earth. Today, it is our turn to follow the radiant example of holiness they have left with us.”
The Vatican estimated 650,000 people had attended the Córdoba Mass, while 1 million people had turned out for the nighttime vigil in the capital.
“We young people lack motivation,” said Emilia Caroti, who found a spot to watch the pope’s vigil from a nearby park, where large screens were broadcasting for the overflow crowd.
“We are a generation that is deeply marked by what we see from the past and the little hope there is for the future, and we hope the Pope can renew our faith in ourselves a bit, that he leaves a message of motivation.”
The site for the Córdoba liturgy was the grounds of the Argentine Aircraft Factory, a plant run by the air force for much of the 20th century that built the attack planes Argentina’s military first used in late 1975 to strike leftist guerrillas.
That counterinsurgency campaign was a prelude to the state terror unleashed under the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, in which human rights groups estimate that around 30,000 people were killed or disappeared.
After Mass, Leo met privately with 20 people chosen by the archbishop, among them Alba Camargo, whose father, stepmother, aunt and uncle all disappeared under Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
Camargo said she told the pope she had come on behalf of relatives still searching for victims’ remains at La Perla, a former clandestine detention center outside Córdoba, and handed him a folder with photos of the excavations and the names of those identified so far.
“He was nodding, as if he knew all about it, and, looking deep in my eyes, took me by the hand and blessed the Franciscan crosses I had brought him,” she told The Associated Press.
Many others in the group, which included a rural worker, a soup kitchen organizer and a human trafficking survivor, were so overcome with emotion they could barely speak, she said. “It was unbelievably powerful to feel him so human, listening to you like that from 15 centimeters away.”
Camargo, 64, who herself was detained by security forces in 1976 at age 13, said the mere meeting was a “gesture showing that he sees us.”
Two weeks ago, forensic anthropologists found and identified the remains of nine missing people from La Perla, one of the dictatorship’s largest clandestine detention and torture centers.
Camargo said that she hoped Tuesday’s meeting “would bring change” at a time when President Javier Milei’s government has gutted funding for dictatorship memorial sites and organizations searching for the disappeared, and has promoted a revisionist account that casts the military’s crimes as little more than excesses in a war against leftist guerrillas.
“It’s exhausting to have people constantly telling you that what you’ve lived through your entire life isn’t true,” Camargo said.
Leo has only made a passing reference to the dictatorship while in Argentina. In his first speech delivered Sunday to President Javier Milei and government authorities, he spoke of Argentina’s history that included “reasons for gratitude and painful memories.”
He said then that it was up to each generation to “discern what deserves to be preserved, to confront past injustices and to add to its shared material and spiritual patrimony,” in comments seen as referring to the dictatorship.
While Leo’s Córdoba homily focused on faith and holiness Tuesday, his more pointed social calls during his first two days in Argentina were still reverberating in Buenos Aires.
Four senators from Milei’s party began preparing Tuesday to take up a stalled bill banning online gambling ads, which Milei has opposed and the church has promoted as a way to protect children. Argentina’s top diplomat defended the administration’s record against critics interpreting the pope’s words as a rebuke of Milei’s austerity, insisting Leo’s message to protect the vulnerable was meant for everyone.
But Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno also acknowledged that his remarks exposed the country’s shortcomings.
“It challenges the entire political class, the leadership class, it challenges us as a society and delivers a message about what we lack,” Quirno told Argentine TV channel TN. “We are working every day to address the pope’s message and what we lack.”
Visual journalist Cristian Kovadloff contributed from Buenos Aires.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Pope Leo XIV watches folk dancers during a youth prayer vigil at Monumento de los Españoles in Buenos Aires, on the fifth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV blesses a baby during a youth prayers vigil in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Pope Leo XIV watches folk dancers during a youth prayer vigil at Monumento de los Españoles in Buenos Aires, on the fifth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
A faithful wearing sunglasses bearing the words "Pope Leo 2026" waits for the start of a youth prayer vigil led by Pope Leo XIV in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Faithful with for Pope Leo XIV to lead a youth prayer vigil at Monumento de los Españoles in Buenos Aires, on the fifth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV waves from a balcony of the archbishop's residence in Cordoba, Argentina, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Gustavo Garello)
Pope Leo XIV addressed the faithful from a balcony of the archbishop's residence in Cordoba, Argentina, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Gustavo Garello)
Pope Leo XIV arrives to preside over Mass at the grounds of the Military Aviation School in Córdoba, Argentina, on the fifth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Members of the Catholic clergy attend a Mass presided over by Pope Leo XIV at the Military Aviation School in Córdoba, Argentina, on the fifth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Members of the Catholic clergy attend a Mass presided over by Pope Leo XIV at the Military Aviation School in Córdoba, Argentina, on the fifth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV arrives to preside over Mass at the grounds of the Military Aviation School in Córdoba, Argentina, on the fifth day of his twelve-day apostolic journey to South America, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Leo XIV waves from a balcony of the archbishop's residence in Cordoba, Argentina, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Gustavo Garello)
Pope Leo XIV arrives to preside over Mass at the grounds of the Military Aviation School in Cordoba, Argentina, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nicolas Aguilera)
