By IAN WILSON
He’s always been a postseason performer.
Whether he was taking the mound in the Western Major Baseball League (WMBL) or in Major League Baseball (MLB), pitcher John Axford saved his best for when the games mattered the most.
That’s been particularly noticeable when the Ontario-born product represented the Milwaukee Brewers, the team he logged 269 regular season games and 263-plus innings with over six years.
The right-handed reliever’s only postseason push with the Brew Crew came in 2011, when he appeared in six games and went 1-0 with three saves and a 1.29 earned run average (ERA) over seven innings. Milwaukee fell that October to the St. Louis Cardinals, who went on to claim the World Series over the Texas Rangers in seven games.
It was a stellar year for Axford, who claimed the National League’s Rolaids Relief Man Award as the top closer in the NL; was named the co-winner of the Tip O’Neill Award, given annually to the best Canadian baseball player; and was recognized as the 2011 Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year Award by the American Mustache Institute, and yes, that is a real thing.
During the 2026 World Series, the retired 43-year-old found himself back in Wisconsin to cheer on his old team and turn in another solid postseason performance. While the Brewers were mounting a 5-4 comeback win over the Tampa Bay Rays in the second game of the Fall Classic, the “Ax Man” could be seen on the American Family Field jumbotron chugging a beer as the 43,245 fans in attendance cheered on.
“I’ll accept some of the credit I guess! Haha!!!” exclaimed Axford in a social media post about his role in inspiring the rally.
MILLION-DOLLAR ARM
Long before Axford become a fan favourite in Milwaukee, the pitcher honed his craft in Saskatchewan and Alberta in the WMBL.
The pride of Port Dover, Ontario caught the attention of the Seattle Mariners when he pitched for the Canadian Junior National Team and Brantford’s Assumption College. The M’s selected him in the seventh round of the 2001 MLB Draft, but instead of turning pro, Axford pursued a scholarship at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
He pitched well for the Fighting Irish – going 14-5 with 133 strikeouts over 141.2 innings in his freshman and sophomore years, working mostly as a starter – until an injury led to Tommy John surgery in the fall of 2003. The setback caused Axford to miss all of 2004 and most of his junior year with the NCAA Division 1 team in 2005.
Undaunted, he transferred to Canisius College for his senior year, a move that would prove critical to his future in baseball.
“It was a rough go of it,” Axford admitted to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Haudricourt during a 2010 interview.
“We weren’t very good. Two years before I got there, they won only four games. The year before I got there, they won only nine. The year I was there, we won 18 games. I didn’t have a very good year. I had just as many walks as strikeouts. I was up and down because I was still trying to figure out my arm slot.”
That summer, Axford looked to add to the 70 innings he threw for the Golden Griffins by signing on with the Melville Millionaires in the WMBL, the circuit that later became the Western Canadian Baseball League (WCBL).
By this point of 2006, Axford was regaining the form he had in his early years at Notre Dame and pitching at the top of his game.
During the WMBL regular season, the 6-foot-5 hill topper registered a 2.27 ERA and 66 strikeouts over 35.2 innings. He also limited opposing hitters to a .139 batting average and just 25 walks. His standout performances included a 19-strikeout effort against the Weyburn Beavers and a 17 K outing during a seven-inning game. The 19 strikeouts established a league record for the most Ks in a single game.
In the playoffs, Axford continued to persevere and often dominate his WMBL competition. He won the opener of the East Division semifinal, a 13-8 Melville victory over the Regina Red Sox, even though he issued 12 walks. His final start in the best-of-five series was a 4-1 loss, but Axford went eight innings, and allowed two runs on seven hits while striking out 14 batters.
“You’ve just got to keep plugging away. These games just end up that way sometimes and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he told the Regina Leader-Post newspaper following the Game 5 loss.
FROM MELVILLE TO THE MINORS
Axford’s strong play was noticed by Mike Havelis, a friend from Canisius College who was interning at International Management Group (IMG), a global sports, fashion and media company.
“He wondered what I was doing,” Axford told the Brantford Expositor newspaper in 2006.
“He thought I should be elsewhere so he called all the major league teams.”
The Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Mets and New York Yankees showed interest. The Yankees granted him a tryout with their Single-A club in Staten Island and from there he was sent to their spring training complex in Tampa, Florida for further assessment.
“What I didn’t know was that I was going to throw to hitters, which made me a little nervous,” confessed Axford to Expositor reporter Brian Smiley.
“The first pitch to the first batter was 93 or 94 miles per hour, and right at his head.”
The next 30 pitches were more controlled and the Yankees liked what they saw, enough to sign him to a professional contract.
Axford suited up for four different minor-league teams with the Yankees in 2007, moving from Staten Island to Charleston to Tampa to the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees.
Despite showing promise that year, Axford was cut by the Yankees in December.
Havelis worked the phones again in 2008 and convinced Jay Lapp, an amateur scout with the Milwaukee Brewers, to attend an Axford bullpen session in the Toronto area. The event was supposed to be witnessed by a handful of scouts but only Lapp made the drive across snow-covered roads.
“He’s the one who actually came,” Axford recalled.
“If it wasn’t for that, all the other things that came after, I don’t know if they’d be there.”
What came after that checkpoint was a minor-league contract with the Brewers and another shot at chasing his dream of playing in the majors.
MAKING IT IN MILWAUKEE
By 2009, Axford worked his way through the minors and made his MLB debut in mid-September. He appeared in seven games that season and picked up his first save. As it turned out, it was the first of many saves for the Brewers.
Baseball America named Axford to their 2010 All-Rookie team after he collected 24 saves in 27 attempts.
The following season was even better. Axford led the National League (NL) with 46 saves – a single-season record for the Brewers – and he picked up votes for the NL Cy Young and MVP awards.
The popular pitcher closed out another 35 games for the Brew Crew in 2012, before being dealt to the St. Louis Cardinals in 2013.
Axford continued pitching in the majors – suiting up for a total of eight different teams over 11 MLB seasons – and bounced back from a number of different injuries.
When he worked his way back to the Brewers in 2021, Axford suffered a gut-wrenching injury after pitching just one-third of an inning for Milwaukee. It seemed to signal the end of his playing career, but a conversation with baseball personality Bob Uecker helped change his mind.
“He was still a player at heart. Every day. He loved the game and the players in it. When he spoke to you on this level he was your teammate. His emotion, passion, and words that day resonated with me more than anyone or anything else. It led me to surgery and an 18 month journey just to get out there and pitch one last time,” wrote Axford on social media after Uecker passed away in January of 2025.
“Bob was an absolute treasure to the game. I’m so grateful for that conversation in 2021. I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with him in my playing career. Even when I wasn’t playing for Milwaukee he would take the time to catch up on the field before games. I feel lucky to have had such a legendary voice call so many of my moments on the mound. Hearing him say ‘heeee struck him out!’ in those late innings to end a close game felt exhilarating. His excitement during those calls always made me feel larger than life on the mound when I heard them after.”
Axford did make one final comeback to represent Canada at the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
Despite all his travels through the minors and the big leagues, Milwaukee will always hold a special place in his heart. The admiration is mutual, as the Brewers inducted Axford as the 72nd member of the club’s Wall of Honor in 2025.
Axford – who registered 144 saves and 589 strikeouts over 525-plus innings and 544 MLB games – has also never forgot about his time playing in Saskatchewan. He returned to the province for a Weyburn Beavers fundraising dinner alongside Blue Jays Central host Jamie Campbell in March of 2025.
(This article is part of the Western Canadian Baseball League’s “From the Vault” series, which focuses on WCBL alumni and is sponsored by Sentinel Storage)
Discover more from Tales of Baseball
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
