Every baseball team seems to have its little quirks. Some players wear the same socks, others follow the same routine before stepping into the batter’s box, and some clubhouse traditions are probably best left unexplained. But the Milwaukee Brewers might have come up with one of the more unusual pregame rituals in recent memory.

During their remarkable 2026 season, which ended with 103 wins and the franchise’s first World Series championship, some Brewers players apparently made smoking cigarettes in the batting cages part of their pregame routine.

Yes, you read that correctly. And Christian Yelich’s explanation makes the story even better.

The Brewers Had Their Own Way of Getting Ready

According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the thinking behind the unusual clubhouse habit was wonderfully simple: if the players smoked heaters in the cage, they would smoke heaters during the game. It’s a ridiculous explanation, of course, but that’s part of the charm.

Yelich described what it was like to walk past the batting cage and see the cigarettes lit. “You walk by the cage and see the cigs lit,” he told Passan, “and you’re like, the boys are ready to rock.” You can almost picture it. Other teams are going through their stretching routines, reviewing scouting reports and getting ready for the first pitch. Meanwhile, Milwaukee has its own little clubhouse tradition.

To be clear, nobody should mistake this for a recommendation about athletic preparation. Smoking isn’t exactly performance-enhancing. But as a glimpse into the personality of a championship clubhouse, it’s certainly memorable.

What Other Teams Have Their Own Little Traditions?

Here’s what I find interesting about this story. Baseball is a long season. There are 162 regular-season games, plenty of travel, plenty of losing streaks and plenty of opportunities for players to develop routines that help them feel comfortable.

Sometimes those routines become superstitions. Sometimes they’re jokes that get carried a little too far. And occasionally, they become part of the team’s identity. The Brewers won a championship, but we’ll never know whether their unusual ritual had anything to do with it. Probably not. Still, it became one of those stories that fans will remember long after the season is over.

And it makes you wonder. What are the Yankees, Dodgers, Blue Jays or other clubs doing behind closed clubhouse doors that nobody outside the room knows about? Every championship team has its stories. Some just happen to be a little stranger than others.

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