Josh Springer

William Contreras is the youngest of three boys (with older brothers Willmer and Willson). Their mother, Olga, worked as a school janitor; their father ran a small business with his brother. Both parents put in long hours, so the boys were supposed to be studying when they lived in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. Instead, they slipped out to play. Real baseballs were out of reach, so they made them from wadded paper and tape and used a broomstick as a bat. Contreras later called those unsupervised afternoons “beautiful moments.” He was a middle infielder then, shortstop and second base, not a catcher. At 17, in February 2015, the Atlanta Braves signed him for a modest $10,000 and immediately moved him behind the plate. The position change stuck. He has said he loves catching because he is “in the middle of the field” and “the only person who has everybody in front of you.” That modest bonus and the forced switch turned out to be the pivot of his career. A later, more private story is his first reaction to the December 2022 trade that sent him from Atlanta to Milwaukee. He told his agent to “trade me back,” responded with something like “MILWAUKEE?! OK. Nobody talk to me,” and was so put off that he stopped speaking to the agent for a while. He has written that he barely understood what a trade meant at the time and that, as a Venezuelan kid coming from Atlanta, Milwaukee felt like a different world. Years later, he openly regrets the reaction. He has said the organization, the fans, and the baseball city won him over, that he “got lucky,” and that he hopes to spend his whole career there, especially after helping the Brewers reach and win the World Series. The paper-and-tape games and the initial “trade me back” moment are quieter than the All-Star selections, Silver Sluggers, or the 2026 World Series MVP, but they show how the path actually unfolded.