After a nerve-racking weekend of watching the baseball draft, Whitefish Bay's Charlie Markson was relieved to hear that he was not only drafted – but drafted by his hometown Milwaukee Brewers.
He was at his cousin's graduation party when he learned that he was drafted in the 38th round to play for a minor league Brewers team in Helena, MT.
Shortly after his agent called, he received a phone call from Craig Counsell – a Whitefish Bay resident who also grew up as a Blue Duke and played for Notre Dame. Although he has followed Counsell's career path up to this point, Markson is now blazing his own trail with the Helena Brewers, where he will play for the rest of the summer.
"I just wanted to have an opportunity to play, and when I found out it was the Brewers, I couldn’t have been any happier," he said. "It couldn't have happened at a better time because all of my family was already at the graduation party. They were overcome with joy."
Markson, a lifelong Brewers fan, said he hopes his career takes a similar course as Counsell's - although he recognizes it is going to take some hard work if he wants to end up graduating from the minor leagues and playing at Miller Park someday.
In Helena, he will play alongside other players who were recently drafted. The team is specifically designed with a 78-game season, instead of the traditional 148-game season. After the end of this season, he plans to come back and train in Milwaukee before returning for spring training in February or March. He hopes to eventually work his way up in the Brewers organization.
Markson batted .252 in his Notre Dame career, with a top mark of .303 as a junior. He drove in 21 runs this season and was second on the team with 11 stolen bases, though he batted just .209.
Markson was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the 44th round back in 2009 out of high school, but chose instead to go to Notre Dame.
Although he's been at Notre Dame the last several years, Markson has never forgotten about his Whitefish Bay roots. Last summer, he came home to play for the Lakeshore Chinooks, and this summer, he's been helping out his former coach Jay Wojcinski in coaching the Blue Dukes baseball team.
If he wasn't drafted Saturday,Markson said he was either going to continue coaching at Whitefish Bay, pursue other baseball opportunities or enter the business world.
"My life was kind of up in the air, but on Saturday, everything fell into place," he said.
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