Dodgers' Mookie Betts opts for Airbnb over "haunted" team hotel in Milwaukee

Though he's well-known for haunting opposing team's pitching staffs, Dodgers' star outfielder Mookie Betts has opted for alternative living accommodations during their three-game series against the Brewers after hearing too much about one hotel with a ghostly reputation.

Instead of joining the rest of the team at the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, Betts will be staying with some friends at a rented Airbnb until the team heads back on the road come Wednesday.

The luxurious hotel, which ranks as one of the most haunted hotels in the country, opened back in the 1800, and has as much of a storied history of housing Major League Baseball players as it does with haunting guests for the last two centuries. 

And "just in case" the stories are true, Betts told the Orange County Register's Bill Plunkett that "it was a good excuse" not to stay there. 

While he hasn't said whether he believes in the paranormal, he's not keen on finding out firsthand. 

"You can tell me what happened after," Betts said. "I just don't want to find out myself."

He's stayed at the hotel before, and though he never had encounters with any of the rumored phantoms, Betts said that the notoriety itself led to sleepless nights.

"Every noise, I'd be like, 'Is that something?'" he told Plunkett.

Betts wouldn't be the first to experience some eerie events at the Pfister. According to a story from MLB.com in 2021, more than 10 different players and coaches have stories from recent years.

Bryce Harper, two-time MVP and one of MLB's biggest stars over the past decade shared a story with ESPN The Magazine about one of his first trips to Milwaukee, where the then-rookie with the Washington Nationals woke up to a room in disarray. 

"When I woke up in the morning — I swear on everything — the clothes were on the floor and the table was on the opposite side of the room against the wall," Harper said after noting that he had laid an outfit out on the table before hitting the hay. "I was so flustered. I honestly thought there might be someone in my room. I had no idea what the hell just happened, so I actually looked around, and then I checked to see if the door was still latched, and it was."

The incident was enough to make him request a room change the next day. 

Former Dodger and seven-time All-Star Michael Young also spoke with ESPN The Magazine back in 2013 when he was with the Texas Rangers, highlighting a particularly noisy visitor who kept him up by "stomping around" his room. The Gold Glove shortstop was able to quell the noise by letting the specter know "he was welcome, that we could be pals, that he could marinate in there for as long as he needed to, just as long as he didn't wake me up."

Back when he was with the Boys in Blue, third baseman Adrián Beltré detailed a trip to the Pfister Hotel in 2001 when the Dominican Republic native says that he "heard knocking noises on his door, while the television and air conditioning repeatedly turned on and off. He also claimed to have heard pounding noises from the other side of his headboard like a man hitting his open hand against the wood," according to MLB's Adam McCalvy.

Most recently, in 2018, a group of St. Louis Cardinals players reported multiple sightings leading to an impromptu slumber party in one room in case the ghosts reappeared. 

Carlos Martínez, who now pitches in the Mexican Baseball League, took to Instagram to tell his followers that he and several other players were camping out with then-Cardinal catcher Francisco Peña after they claimed to have spotted two ghosts in now-Atlanta Braves' outfielder Marcell Ozuna's room. 

"We are all here. We are all in Peñita's room," he said. "We are all stuck here. We are going to sleep together … If the ghost shows again, we are all going to fight together."

Clint Hurdle, who formerly managed both the Pittsburgh Pirates and Colorado Rockies, told of a time when a player was so riled up by a TV that kept turning on that he had to have "him come into my room — not to sleep. I settled him down, went back to his room with him, sat for a while."

Like with most ghost stories, it's unlikely that any of these spooky tales will ever be confirmed. However, it wouldn't be farfetched to see more players get on board with the stance former MLB outfielder Carlos Gomez took in 2009 while speaking with the New York Post. 

"I'm scared to go there," Gomez said. "They should change the hotel. Everybody here doesn't like the hotel. Why they always put us in the same hotel when you can't sleep?"

The Pfister Hotel is actually one of two "haunted" hotels that host MLB players throughout the season, with the other being the Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort & Golf Club in Florida, which is where many teams stay while stopping in to play the Tampa Bay Rays. 

CBS Sports' R.J. Anderson took a deep dive into whether ballplayers are more prone to superstitious tendencies — a la Pedro Cerrano and his infamous voodoo doll named Jobu in "Major League" — and thus, the paranormal. He cites author Mickey Bradley on the widely-accepted notion that since superstition is the life force of baseball, players are "more used to looking outside of logic for an explanation" when "something odd or weird happens."

While Betts now joins an ever-growing list of players who have shelled out their own cash for other room and board in order to keep their distance from the Pfister Hotel, it doesn't appear that the switch-up has had too much of an impact on his play as he led off Tuesday's 6-2 win with a 392-foot blast to left centerfield. 

The Dodgers and Brewers are currently tied one-game-apiece in the series. Wednesday's matchup is scheduled for 10:40 a.m., in a left-handed showdown between starting pitchers Clayton Kershaw and Wade Miley.