Dodgers' Mookie Betts Has a Spooky Reason for Avoiding the Team Hotel

Maren Angus-Coombs | Aug 14, 2024

Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports

Mookie Betts returned to the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup on Monday after missing eight weeks with a fractured hand.

He wasn't about to lose sleep over paranormal activity.

For the second consecutive season, Betts has declined to stay with the team at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee. The hotel was opened in 1893 by Charles Pfister, who is rumored to still be enjoying his stay on the property.

"Charles Pfister is so closely connected with this hotel, he becomes kind of the spokes-ghost," Pfister narrator Anna Lardinois said as transcribed by WUWM's Becky Mortenson. "And if you had to have a ghost in a hotel, I can't think of a better one than Charles Pfister. Because Charles Pfister, it appears, just wants you to have an amazing time in his hotel and wants the hometown baseball team to win.”

With Betts on the opposing team, he'd rather have a good night's sleep without worrying about the creepy noises that might keep him awake.

Players from other teams have reported close encounters with the spirits roaming the hotel. ESPN The Magazine interviewed several players about the hotel back in 2013.

Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper claimed he had clothes moved across his room at the hotel.

Former Cincinnati Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips said, "We play Milwaukee a lot, but I remember one time I came into the room and just sat on the bed. Then, for some reason, the damn radio turned on. So I turned it off and got in the shower. When I was done, that motherf---er had turned back on."

"It's freaky as s---, with the head-shot paintings on the walls and the old curtains everywhere," Giancarlo Stanton said in 2013. "It reminds me of the Disneyland Haunted House. The less time I'm there, the better."

Regardless of what happens to the rest of his teammates, Betts will be peacefully sleeping at his Airbnb and has no intentions of visiting the haunting grounds.

“You can tell me what happened after,” he said last year. “I just don’t want to find out myself.”

His views on the paranormal are also still the same.

“No. That ain’t going to change,” he said when asked about it this year.

In his first two games against the Brewers, Betts has gone 4-for-9 with a home run, a run scored, three runs batted in and two strikeouts.

Both games resulted in wins for the Dodgers.