Audio: Reporter Mark Leibovich's interview with Jagler and Mueller 

John's Journal: John McCain May Hate To Live in Milwaukee, but Not as Much as I Hate Politics...

This week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain will come to Wisconsin to push for his candidacy.

Four years ago, he made a comment to a reporter that some people might not think would be so welcoming around here.

Reporter Mark Leibovich, now of the New York Times, heard him say that, as Leibovich put it in his 2004 article in the Washington Post, "He would hate to live in Milwaukee."

"We were at a Diamondbacks game (against the San Diego Padres) in 2004, in the springtime. I was writing a profile of him for the Washington Post, which is where I worked then.

"We were just talking. He was just talking about various random things that two people sitting next to each other in the course of a three-hour baseball game talk about.

"For whatever reason, he said he would hate to live in Milwaukee. I put it in my story, and lo and behold, four years later, a radio station in Milwaukee has found it.

"I think it was probably a former Brewer playing in the game."

As a matter of fact, on the next part of his online article of the story, he says that former Brewer and then-Diamondback Richie Sexson was batting in the game.

"(McCain's) a big baseball fan. He knows baseball. It's not inconceivable that, you talk baseball and a team comes up. I would be guessing if I sort of tried to remember the context, but it was pretty straight forward.

"If he did, I don't remember. The only reason I put that in the story was that I did a bunch of bullet points on stuff that he said, and points that were memorable to me and that wound up in my notebook."

Leibovich remembers other specific points McCain made during his time with the potential future President and devoted baseball fan.

"He loves baseball. He could watch 'The Bedwetters' play 'The Thumbsuckers.' I put that in the story, too. It was probably not unlike two people watching a baseball, talking about any number of things, long periods of silence remarking on the game.

"I also remember putting in the story that he was heckling the opposing pitcher (the Padres' Jason Szuminski) when he was knocked out of the game. The pitcher had gone to M.I.T. He had given up three or four runs in half an inning, and he was coming off the mound and McCain yelled, 'Next up, NASA, buddy!' or something like that."

Note: Newsradio 620 WTMJ has contacted the McCain campaign for comment, and his campaign has not yet responded.