Chapman, Milwaukee connection binds baseball professionals
Don August (left), a former pitcher for the MLB’s Milwaukee Brewers, and Jeff Levering (right, center), a radio announcer for the Brewers, found out they’re both Chapman graduates — and neighbors. Photos courtesy of August and Levering
Don August and Jeff Levering first discovered they were neighbors one bone-chilling February 2015 morning at the Milwaukee Brewers’ Arctic Tailgate, a charming annual tradition in which diehard fans sleep overnight at Miller Park, shielding themselves against freezing temperatures with fuzzy mittens, portable heaters and more than a few beers.
August, a former pitcher for the Brewers and 1984 graduate of Chapman University, was mingling with fans and handing out souvenirs as part of the event. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone come up to him and say, “Hey, Panthers!”
That authoritative, silky voice belonged to Levering, who had recently been hired as a radio announcer for the Brewers and was himself a 2005 graduate of Chapman. The two struck up a conversation; eventually, August asked Levering if he’d found a place to live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“He goes, ‘Well, I’m going to move to a place called Menomonee Falls,’” August recalled, the corners of his mouth upturned. “I go, ‘I live in Menomonee Falls — where at?’ He goes, ‘Well, I’m gonna be off this road called Pilgrim Road.’ I go, ‘I live two houses off of Pilgrim Road … Are you a stalker? You following me around?’”
Six years later, and living 10 houses apart in the village of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, that easy camaraderie still remains between the two. The coincidences abound: they’re both Chapman alumni, both affiliated with the Brewers, both living on the same street. They’re also men who haven’t hesitated to take baseball’s hand — content with being pulled on a long journey of grueling bus rides and airplane flights — with pristinely maintained fields and lifelong friendships. And they don’t seem to regret a thing about those careers — ones that landed them, incidentally, right next to one another.
Don August, right, winding up for one of the many pitches thrown in his career with the Milwaukee Brewers, which spanned from 1988-1991.
An international athlete’s unconventional experience
He wore a plain Adidas cap with an everyman, soft blue Patagonia jacket. A neat brown cabinet made up the entirety of his Zoom background.
You wouldn’t have been able to tell that Don August was any different from your friendly uncle, and he probably wouldn’t classify himself as any different, either. Yet when he opens his mouth, a tapestry of stories spins away like the break of his once-potent looping curveball.
August was the 17th overall pick in the 1984 MLB draft after his junior year at Chapman, the highest a player’s ever been drafted from the university. He eventually made the 1984 U.S. Olympic baseball team, but only after his Chapman coach Mike Weathers convinced a stubborn August to wake up at 8:00 a.m. for a Saturday tryout. After his MLB career fizzled out, August went overseas to pitch in the Mexican League, in Taiwan and in Italy, thriving by becoming bilingual while American teammates struggled to learn Spanish, Chinese or Italian.
Eight years after a first season with the Brewers that saw him finish fourth in Rookie of the Year voting, August found himself invited to a private bar room in Taiwan, at the time pitching for the Sinon Bulls of the Chinese Professional Baseball League. Inside, a Taiwanese woman came up to him and asked him if he knew what the “untruth game” was.
Judging by the question, the fact that there were 20 mobster-types waiting menacingly in the room and the stories he’d heard of other players getting thrown off buildings or pistol-whipped, August realized she was referring to a gambling ring that involved players throwing games for money.
The woman offered him $10,000 on the spot to participate. He politely declined. He was quickly ushered into an elevator with the mobsters, and at that moment, August’s life flashed before his eyes. He was convinced the elevator would go up and his body would be tossed off a roof.
Instead, the elevator went down to the lobby. The gangsters went one way and August hurried the other.
“Any other little kid growing up wanted to play baseball; I just happened to make it all the way to the Major Leagues,” August said. “Even when I was in Taiwan, I’m just there as a guy playing baseball. I’m just a regular person. But the stories I tell, (in particular) that gangster thing, it’s like, ‘Wow, how’d this happen to me?’”
“Any other little kid growing up wanted to play baseball; I just happened to make it all the way to the Major Leagues. Even when I was in Taiwan, I’m just there as a guy playing baseball. I’m just a regular person. But the stories I tell, (in particular) that gangster thing, it’s like, ‘Wow, how’d this happen to me?’”
That down-to-earth nature never went away, particularly after he made a permanent home for himself in Wisconsin, Levering noted.
“As much of a California guy he is still at heart, he’s got that Midwest in him now, which is: you take a breath, you’re happy with what life gives you and you kind of just beat to your own drum,” Levering said.
After he finished his final year of pitching in Italy in 2000, August contacted the coach of a local high school team in Menomonee Falls. He’s now been coaching their junior varsity student athletes for 20 years. In the meantime, he’s working on a book, tentatively titled “Foreign Affairs,” for which he’s translating with an author 445 pages worth of his experiences playing abroad into a larger novel. And he doesn’t regret much of anything related to his journey.
“To me, it’s never really ended,” August said of his baseball career, his pale blue eyes twinkling. “I just keep going with it. It’s what I do. If I didn’t do that, I’d just feel empty.”
Jeff Levering, left, on a successful fishing trip with announcing partner and legendary broadcaster Bob Uecker, right.
A radio voice’s ‘ability to grind’
Jeff Levering had the same notion as August: he was going to ride the baseball wagon until the wheels fell off. A member of Chapman University’s Division III-winning team in 2005, he realized playing professional baseball wouldn’t be an option, but fell in love with a different medium when he did his first play-by-play of a Chapman softball game as a junior.
“Even going back and listening to that tape — which is hard to do because it’s so bad — that’s where I felt like, ‘This is what I want to do in my career,’” Levering said. “I always knew that this was a path that I wanted to take.”
“Even going back and listening to that tape — which is hard to do because it’s so bad — that’s where I felt like, ‘This is what I want to do in my career. I always knew that this was a path that I wanted to take.”
There have been many stories of players enduring the strain of constant travel and modest accommodations while playing in baseball’s minor leagues. August himself can tell you millions of them. But less frequently mentioned is the life of broadcasters, who travel alongside the team. Just ask Levering, who honed his on-air voice throughout multiple seasons with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes and Springfield Cardinals.
Just like August’s experience in the minors and overseas, Levering had to pay his dues for a shot at the MLB, whether it be 16-hour bus rides from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Springfield, Missouri, or four-hour layovers stuck at airports. But despite the uncomfortable experience of trying to “sleep like a Tetris board” on buses, Levering doesn’t regret a thing from those days.
“Most of being in the minor leagues is patience and it’s just your ability to grind,” Levering said. “If you’re not a first-round draft pick (in the MLB), sometimes you get overlooked. In the broadcast world, if you didn’t go to Syracuse, sometimes you get overlooked. So it’s just a matter of being patient.”
Eventually, Levering was hired by the Brewers in 2015, working alongside the legendary Bob Uecker during radio broadcasts of Milwaukee home games. The two have formed a special friendship, as Levering said Uecker treats his kids like his own grandchildren, offering them gumballs every time they come to the ballpark.
Levering particularly cherishes his Chapman days, as he met his wife at the university and still holds a fantasy football and baseball league with his old teammates to this day. In a bit of poetry, his last at-bat in a Chapman uniform came during the last game of the Division III World Series his senior year — held in Appleton, Wisconsin, a two-hour drive from where he now calls home.
The journeys collide, 10 houses apart
Nowadays, COVID-19 and piles of snow during the Milwaukee winter limit their interaction, but
August and Levering still see each other all the time. Driving to drop the kids off at school, going to the grocery store, collecting the mail, Levering estimated they bump into one another multiple times a week. And the fun of their very first interaction still remains, years later.
“The fact that he walks by my house every day with his wife and I’m outside cutting my grass or playing catch with my son, and we get to have that little bit of camaraderie already built in, that’s a fun thing,” Levering said.