Ball Parks – # 6 - Milwaukee County Stadium, WI

5 September 1999

This series began with a stadium that no longer exists. I want to add another extinct ballpark to bolster my life list since who knows how many I will finally accumulate. Many people have succeeded in quests to take in a game at every major league ballpark. I’ve read about some maniacs who do all of them in one season. I’m in no hurry and, since this is my blog and my quest, I’m going to pad my stash with places the rest of you young upstarts can’t get to anymore.

Milwaukee County Stadium (5 September 1999)

I lived in Milwaukee for five years in the early ‘70’s…during graduate school and the first full-time work after that. I was a transplanted New Yorker and would see the Yankees when they came to town. My first date with Beck was supposed to be at a game there. She had the nerve to turn me down with this lame excuse about having a class that evening. I went alone and still remember freezing my ass off. It was September and it can get cold in Wisconsin.

Milwaukee had not had a major league team since 1901, so the civic fathers began that trend of creating facilities to lure franchises…“If you build it, they will come.” The first baseball-only stadium built entirely with public funds, Milwaukee County Stadium opened in 1953 to welcome the relocated Boston Braves…the first team in 50 years to change cities. Its unremarkable design and symmetrical shape changed little over its lifetime save for the occasional seating added or fences moved. Some might suggest that the addition of Bernie Brewer’s chalet and slide into a giant beer stein was the crowning ornament. What was good at County Stadium then (and Miller Park now) are the brats…you can always get a decent sausage in Milwaukee.

County Stadium Sausage Race (5 September 1999)

Speaking of sausages, the Brewers were the first team to have 

this between-inning stunt where sausage-costumed stadium 

workers high-tail it around the warning track to home plate. 

Since then, the Washington Nationals do a Presidents Race

and the Pittsburgh Pirates race pierogis.

County Stadium was where Warren Spahn won his 300th game in 1961 and Nolan Ryan won his 300th in 1999. It was where Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Harvey Haddix (right now, I wish his name were Pete Perkins) pitched twelve perfect innings (no hits, no walks, no one reaches base in any way) only to lose the game 1-0 in the 13th inning. Here was where Willie Mays hit four homers in one game in 1961. I saw Hank Aaron play there. He was with the Brewers in the final two years of his remarkable career and hit his 755th home run here in 1976.

Milwaukee County Stadium, (5 September 1999)

Behind the center field fence, the new Miller Park is under 

construction. The Brewers had to play in County Stadium 

an extra year because of construction delays, including one 

caused by a crane accident in July, 1999 that destroyed 

work in progress and killed three iron workers.

Mark McGuire at Bat (5 September 1999)

With the in-laws in Wisconsin, there are regular trips back to America’s Dairyland and the long Labor Day weekend included this Sunday game against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Brewers scored three in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game only to give up four more in the 10th and lose 13-9.

It wasn’t a good year for the Brew Crew as they finished 5th in the 6-team Central Division, 22½ games behind the leading Houston Astros. Funny how the Astros are now in the American League and the Brewers are in the National League. Go figure.

Funnier still is the fact that, at this writing, the team is leading its division which includes the defending champion Chicago Cubs. I’d love to see them make the playoffs. Go Brewers.