Happy Women in Baseball Day

Today is National Women in Baseball Day, created by the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association to recognize the contributions women have made to the sport. It is celebrated today, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the AAGPBL's first game, played in 1943.

In celebration of that day, I posted the story of the Milwaukee Brewers' three female owners.

On this National #WomenInBaseballDay, we remember Agnes Havenor, the original @Brewers’ first female president. She took over the club following the death of her husband in 1912, and led the Brews to back-to-back championships in 1913 and 1914. pic.twitter.com/YxOHVvSNOY

— Borchert Field (@BorchertField) May 30, 2018

Then there’s Florence Killilea. She was born into a baseball family- the American League was founded in her #Milwaukee living room. She took over the old @Brewers in 1929, when she herself was just 26! https://t.co/kihkuQBgLI #WomenInBaseballDay pic.twitter.com/hdGoeCSIim

— Borchert Field (@BorchertField) May 31, 2018

Can’t forget Idabel Borchert, owner of the old @Brewers after her husband Otto died right before the 1927 home opener. Even after selling the club she owned Borchert Field, is pictured here burning the Brews’ lease in 52 so they could move into County Stadium! #WomenInBaseballDay pic.twitter.com/PS1lLOWkVr

— Borchert Field (@BorchertField) May 31, 2018

Three very important women, each of whom contributed to the story of our Milwaukee Brewers.

And, of course, we can't forget our own Milwaukee Schnitts, who started playing in the league's second year and who brought women's professional baseball to the Cream City.

In honor of National #WomenInBaseballDay, here are the 1944 #Milwaukee Chicks. Originally called the "Brewettes", after the @Brewers, & also known as the "Schnitts" in the pages of the Journal, they brought a @AAGPBL championship to Borchert Field in their only year of existence. pic.twitter.com/Do9Q3JF9GX

— Borchert Field (@BorchertField) May 30, 2018

Our Brews at the Milwaukee County Historical Society

Now we've come to the real meat of the Milwaukee County Historical Society's recently-closed exhibit "Back Yards to Big Leagues: Milwaukee’s Sports and Recreation History"; the display dedicated to our very own Milwaukee Brewers.

And there it was, on the second level of the museum, right next to the Braves who would displace them at County Stadium.

The display is headlined by a photo of the 1904 Brewers we've discussed before.

Magnificent photo.

The American Association Brewers (1902-1952 were founded after the major league Brewers became the St. Louis Browns following their inaugural 1901 season.

Under that, a posed picture of the 1913 Brews and their goat mascot Fatima, as well as another familiar face.

WHO WAS THE FIRST WOMAN BASEBALL EXECUTIVE IN MILWAUKEE AND HOW DID HER TEAMS DO?

Agnes Malloy Havenor was named the team president after her husband died in 1912. She ran things from an office in the Majestic Building, though she left the on-the-field decisions to manager Hugh Duffy. The two did not get along and Havenor hired third-baseman Harry Clark to be player-manager of the team. The 1913 and 1914 teams won American Association championships and post-season series to claim the minor league championship. In 1914 Havenor married Al Timme who assumed the presidency for the rest of her ownership.

Of course, we can't talk about the Brews without mentioning Al Simmons, the greatest player to come out of the Milwaukee sandlots. The local boy had started his career with his hometown club:

HOW DID THE "DUKE OF MITCHELL STREET END UP IN THE MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME?

Al Simmons (Aloysius Szymanski) was born in Milwaukee in 1902 and became known as the "Duke of Mitchell Street," the street that was the heart of Milwaukee's Polish Community. There is little argument that Al Simmons was Milwaukee's best baseball player. He played 20 seasons and is one of four Wisconsin natives in the Hall of Fame. Simmons' first Brewer game was on September 3, 1922, and he hit a home run, triple, and single. He split the 1923 season between Milwaukee and Shreveport before Connie Mack paid $35,000 for him to play for the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League. Simmons had over 100 RBI each of his first 11 major league seasons. He batted .358 in his nine years with the Athletics before being sold to the White Sox in 1933. His lifetime average is .334. Simmons died in Milwaukee in 1956.

Below the Duke, a collage of photos relating to the 1936 pennant-winning Brewers.

I love this team photo, against the wooden fence. That's longtime trainer Harry E. "Doc" Buckner> at the far right of the picture.

Below the photo, a newspaper ad from the team headlined "71 Years of Good Sportsmanship", thanking Milwaukee fans "for their patronage and encouragement". The picture of the dapper young men in floppy caps is the Cream City baseball club, Milwaukee's first post-Civil War club and the first to declare itself major league. It's interesting that the Brewers were drawing a line between that early team and themselves.

Next to it, a commemorative supplement from the Wisconsin News that chronicled the Brewers' 1936 campaign. I have one of those in my collection, and can't believe that I haven't yet reprinted in on this site.

We then jump to the next championship era in the Brews' history: the 1940s.

HOW MANY NO-HITTERS DID BREWERS PITCHERS THROW DURING THEIR HALF-CENTURY IN THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION?

> Joe Hovlik, a native of Czechoslovakia, threw the first Brewers no-hitter on August 20, 1912.
> Dennis John Gearin, who was only 5'4" and 145 pounds (prompting several nicknames - Denny, Dainty Dinty, and Kewpie) threw a no-hitter at home on August 21, 1926.
> Louis Amerigo "Crip" Polli, born in Baverno, Italy and one of six Italian-born major leaguers, threw a 10-inning no hitter on the road against the St. Paul Saints on September 7, 1935.

> Bert Thiel threw the fourth no-hitter on August 16, 1951 in the customary seven inning second game of a double header with the Toledo Mud Hens.

And of course you knew Sport Shirt Bill would make an appearance.

Bill Veeck purchased the Brewers in 1941 and showed his knack for promotional gimmicks and showmanship. He hired Cubs star Charlie "Jolly Cholly" Grimm to manage the team and they won the American Association penannt in 1943. The Cubs hired Grimm to manage the Cubs in 1944, and he convinced Veeck to hire Casey Stengel - at that point a losing manager - to take over the Brewers. They won the pennant that year going wire-to-wire with a 102-51 record, resurrecting Stengel's career. After the Brewers won the pennant again in 1945, Veeck sold his interest in the team for a $275,000 profit.

That story isn't quite accurate; as Veeck himself would later say, Grimm hired Stengel without his knowledge and over his very strenuous later objections, but Veeck was deployed with the Marines at the time and unable to stop the deal.

Finally, we have two photos from that era. The first is an action shot of Grimm himself at bat, from a May 2, 1943 Milwaukee Journal photo spread of their Waukesha spring training camp, and the second is a team photo that was reproduced in the August 16, 1943 edition of Brewer News. You can barely see Veeck himself in the upper-right corner of the photo.

Hard to distill 51 years of baseball history into a single panel's display, but the curators did so admirably.

This section was a fitting tribute to our Brews, but as we'll see, it wasn't the only one in the exhibit.

The Orchard in 1910

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee gives us a fascinating look at Athletic Park and its neighborhood as seen in 1910.

This map shows a section in the city bordered by Burleigh on the north, &th Street on the east, 10th Street on the west, and extending one-half block south of Chambers. Which, of course, includes Borchert Field, then known as Athletic Park and identified here as "American Association Milwaukee Club Base Ball Park".

This is part of the University's Digital Collections. This one comes from a series of municipal maps:

The Digital Sanborn Maps of Milwaukee 1894 & 1910 are two fire insurance atlases featuring detailed color maps of Milwaukee. Produced by the Sanborn Map Company, the 1894 atlas includes four volumes, consisting of 450 map sheets and the 1910 atlas includes eight volumes, consisting of 830 map sheets. Sanborn maps were designed to assist fire insurance agents with insuring property. Produced for over 12,000 urbanized areas in the United States, Sanborn maps have been described by the Library of Congress as "the single most important record of urban growth and development in the United States during the past one hundred years." Some features found on Sanborn fire insurance maps include: construction material of dwellings, commercial buildings, and factories, fire walls, windows, doors, style and composition of roofs, wall thickness, cracks in exterior walls, elevator locations, building uses, sidewalk and street widths, layout and ownership names, property boundaries, distance between buildings, house and block numbers, location of water mains, hydrants, piping, wells, cisterns, and fuel storage tanks.

Outstanding. And catnip to a history lover like myself. You can go block by block and see the structures that were once in place, often in exacting detail.

Let's take a closer look at the ballpark itself:

At this point, the grandstand is showing the horseshoe form it would eventually take:

The first base stands, however, weren't yet connected to the main building, and were uncovered. Bleachers with no roof.

I wonder when they were connected?

In 1944, a large section of the first base grandstand roof was torn apart by storm winds. I wonder if not being part of the orginal structure contributed to that collapse? Was it not built to the same standards as the rest of the park?

Moving on to the outfield, we see another set of bleachers, along with two permanent buildings. On the left, a "Ticket Window and Waiting Room", and on the right, "Lockers".

Would be interesting to see if those facilities were retained in the ballpark's later life. Take a look at this arial photograph from the 1930s, after the grandstand was built out but before permanent light standards were added in 1935:

You can see the layout is essentially the same as our 1910 map; small bleacher section roughly in the middle, buildings bordered in outfield fence along each side.

All in all, a wonderful peek into the Orchard's past. We are indebted to the Sanborn Map Company for chronicling this chapter in Milwaukee history, and UWM for preserving it for our use today.

1915 Brewers Home Schedule

This Brewers home game schedule was published in early 1915:

At first glance, it looks pretty straightforward. Opening Day at Athletic Park (still a decade away from being re-named Borchert Field) was April 15, the last regular-season home game was September 11th.

The American Association roster was fairly stable, and all the usual suspects are there: Minneapolis, St. Paul, Indianapolis, Columbus, Louisville, Kansas City, and... Cleveland?!

Yes, Cleveland. The Cleveland Spiders, to be precise. And their story leads us to the history of the Federal League.

The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs was an "outlaw" league that tried to challenge Major League Baseball. Founded in 1913, it set itself up as a third major league in 1914, with clubs in Brooklyn, Chicago, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Kansas City, and Buffalo.

The Federal League had fielded a team in Cleveland in 1913—the "Green Sox", managed by Cy Young—but Cleveland Indians owner Charley Somers was determined to keep the Feds out of his town. Somers moved the American Association's Toledo Mud Hens, which he also owned, to Cleveland starting with the 1914 season. The relocated Mud Hens were known as the "Cleveland Bearcats".

In 1915, the Federal League continued to come on strong. In January that year, it filed an antitrust suit against the American and National Leagues. The upstarts were also successful in luring major league players to their outlaw league. Somers renamed his American Association club the "Cleveland Spiders", after an old National League team.

League Park in Cleveland, circa 1911

The Bearcats/Spiders played in League Park, the home of the Indians. This took up the open dates left by Indians road games and essentially shut the Federal League out of Cleveland. That meant that, for these two years, the Brewers played a succession of road games in a major league ballpark.

The Feds were unable to crack Northern Ohio, but were fairly successful in forcing the Majors to take notice. Following the 1915 season, the majority of the owners agreed cease operations, and drop their legal action against organized baseball, in exchange for a cash settlement. The lawsuit would be carried on by the Baltimore Terrapins' owners, in a futile attempt to keep big-league ball in the Charm City, but would eventually end with the establishment of baseball's antitrust exemption.

Other Federal League owners were more successful; Charles Weeghman, owner of the erstwhile Chicago Whales, purchased the Chicago Cubs. He promptly moved them into into the Whales' Weeghman Park, which you know today as Wrigley Field. The St. Louis Terriers owner Phil Ball bought the American League's St. Louis Browns. Ball would become important to Milwaukee's story in a couple decades, when he bought a controlling interest in the Brewers.

And, of course, Somers moved his American Association club back to Toledo and the Mud Hens were reborn. Those Cleveland Spiders are now just a footnote in baseball history, an interesting curiosity buried in the home schedule for our 1915 Milwaukee Brewers.

1919 Schedule Card

This 1919 schedule card sold a couple years ago on eBay. A simple wallet-sized card, it lists the team's schedule, both "At Home" and "Abroad".

On the back, a 1919 calendar.

Notice that there's no team nickname. There's a very good reason for that, but it's a story for another time.

A 3:30 start? "Never Mind Fans, It Won't Happen"

In 1912, the Brewers announced that they were considering pushing back the start time of games from 3:00pm to 3:30. Fans reacted with a decided lack of enthusiasm, and the plan was scrapped, but not before the Milwaukee Journal published this humorous look at the proposal:

"Three 'Original' Brewers Remain", 1915

The Milwaukee Sentinel ran this photo on March 26, 1915, featuring three Brewers with the longest tenure.

The "original Brewers" are presented here. Tom Dougherty, veteran pitcher; Harry Clark, third basemanm and Newt Randall, king of the right garden. These three old timers, who have seen the club rise from a second division bunch to a two time flag winner, know every blade of grass in Athletic park. Not once have they failed to deliver, and even Tom, who has been twirling a long time now, is still able to make his old soupbone shoot them over at all angles.

"Original" would imply that the three had been with the Brewers since the club's first season in 1902. But that was not the case for these three men.

Harry "Pep" Clark and Tom Dougherty had both come to the Brews in 1904. Newt Randall was a relative newcomer, purchased from the National League Boston Doves before the 1908 season. All three would become Brewer legends and fan-favorites. Clark added "manager" to his job description in 1913, and the Brews famously went on to win their first pennant that season, and a second in 1914, making him a popular fixture in Milwaukee.

These "original Brewers" would be broken up just months after this photo was published. Randall and Dougherty were sold, along with Joe Burg and "Jap" Barbeau, to the Pacific Coast League's Oakland Oaks in November of 1915. The four veterans were moved as part of a massive rebuilding by owner Al Timme, who warned that nobody on the roster was safe.

Dougherty never made an appearance for Oakland, but Randall had a cup of coffee with them. He saw action in five games, managing just one hit in eleven at-bats. For both men, leaving the Brewers also meant the end of their playing careers. Pep Clark hung on to his managerial job for one more season before he too was replaced, although he did come back for a second turn with the Brews as player/manager in 1922 and 1923.

Video: Our Boys in the 1917 World Series

This film gives us a look at Game One of the 1917 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and New York Giants.



It is a rare opportunity to see some early-20th century Brews in action, as the Cream City club had contributed three starting position players to that 1917 White Sox squad:

• Oscar "Happy" Felsch was Chicago's starting center fielder. A local Milwaukee boy, Felsch was a member of the 1913 and 1914 pennant-winning Brewer squads, going to the Sox in 1915. By 1917 he was a true star. He was later banned from baseball for his part in throwing the 1919 World Series, the only one of the infamous "Eight Men Out" who ever wore a Brewer uniform. Felsch came home to live the rest of his life in Milwaukee, where he owned a grocery store and a tavern.
  
  
  
• Catcher Ray Schalk, widely considered the best catcher in the majors, had played for the Brews in 1911 and the first half of 1912 before being sold to the White Sox in late July for $10,000. He played nineteen years in the majors, all but the last with the Sox. Schalk moved into managing and was the skipper of the Buffalo Bisons in 1936, when the Brewers beat them to win the Junior World Series. He would return to Milwaukee for a brief managerial stint with the Brews in 1940, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955.
  
  
  
• Outfielder Nemo Leibold had a more circuitous route from Milwaukee to Chicago than either of his two teammates. He was a Brewer in 1911 and 1912 before moving to the Cleveland Indians, who traded him to the Sox during the 1915 season. After his playing days were over, he had two managerial stints in the American Association; first with the Columbus Red Birds (1928-32) and the second with the Louisville Colonels (1944-48).

That 1917 roster also included two men who would later play in Milwaukee:

• Backup first baseman Ted Jourdan was a frequent visitor to Athletic Park; he had a solid five-year career with the Minneapolis Millers (1919, 1922-24) after leaving Chicago. In the middle of the 1924 season, he got to see the home dugout when the Millers loaned him to the Brewers for 14 games.
  
  
  
• Lefty Dave Danforth pitched for the Brewers in 1926. He won seventeen games that season, including two during the club's 21-game winning streak. He struggled at the beginning of 1927, and just weeks into the season (and following the sudden death of team owner Otto Borchert) he was shipped off to New Orleans of the Southern Association.

Now that you've met the Brewers' contribution to the 1917 White Sox, see if you can spot any of these men in the footage!

A Trio of Old-Timers

Old-Timer's Day is a long tradition in baseball, going back to "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" on July 4, 1939, when the 1927 Yankees were reunited to watch Lou Gehrig be honored.

The pinstripers made it an annual event in 1947, and has been a part of baseball's culture ever since.

So what do you do if your major league team isn't old enough to have Old Timers? You reach back in the city's baseball history. And that's exactly what happened in Milwaukee in 1960 when the Braves held their first Old-Timers game at County Stadium. Many former Brewers were brought back to greet the crowd, and three of them were photographed at a dinner in their honor the night before.

MILWAUKEE, WIS., JULY 9 -- OLD TIMERS SWAP YARNS -- Baseball greats of by-gone days got together last night when they were honored at a dinner at the Miller Brewing Co. Recalling some of their diamond deeds of yesteryear are: left to right, Geo. McBride, Bill "Jap" Barbeau and Davy Jones. McBride and Jones played on the Milwaukee American League team in 1901 and Barbeau played on the Brewers of 1915 and 16.

The Miller Inn is well-known to anyone who has taken the Miller Brewery tour; it's the last stop, where you can sample some of the wares you saw being made. It still has the distinctive diagonal wood paneling.

1915/16 M101-4 Sporting News card

George McBride was a former shortstop who only had a brief tenure with the Brews. Born in the Cream City in 1880, he made his debut in September of 1901 with the American League Brewers, collecting three appearances. The team moved to St. Louis after the season ended, but McBride he turned down the opportunity to stay with them, choosing instead to sign with the new American Association club.

McBride went back to the majors in 1905. After short stints with the Pirates and Cardinals, he finally found a home with the Washington Senators in 1908 and from that point on he would be found at Griffith Stadium. As his career wound down, he began to transition into coaching under the watchful eye of Clark Griffith himself. From 1917 through 1920 made only a handful of appearances, served mostly as an instructor, base coach and fill-in manager when Griffith was traveling on scouting missions. In 1921 Griffith appointed McBride Washington's manager, but his tenure was short-lived. On July 27, just over halfway through the season, he was struck in the head by a thrown ball, suffering a concussion and spending the following week confined to bed. McBride returned to the dugout on August 4, but continued to be afflicted with dizziness and fainting spells. He resigned his position the following December and, turning down Griffith's offer of a scouting job, returned to his hometown as a "man of leisure".

McBride became active in the Milwaukee Elks club after moving back to Milwaukee. In 1935, he was selected to chair the Elks' annual pre-season dinner honoring the Brewers, a post he held well into the Milwaukee Braves era. He passed away in 1973. At least into the 1990s, the Elks presented an athletic scholarship known as the "George McBride Award" to a Milwaukee-area high school athlete.

	Barbeau as a Brewer in 1915

Third baseman Bill "Jap" Barbeau played for the Brewers from 1914 and 1915 and then again in 1917 and 1918. Although the majority of his fourteen-year career was spent in the minors, he did make it to the Show for short stints in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. The New York City native took to Milwaukee; he led the Brewers' off-season barnstorming team for years.

I don't know where his colorful nickname came from, although I fear it may have been a reference to his stature; he was famously the shortest Brewer on the pennant-winning 1914 club.

After leaving the Brewers, Barbeau finished his career with short stints in St Paul and Omaha, and then retired to Milwaukee. He was active as a manager, coach and occasional player in the local semi-pro baseball scene for twenty years, which brought him to Borchert Field with some regularity. He died in 1969.

1909-11 T206 card

The final member of our trio, Davy Jones, was an outfielder known for his speed, both in the field and on the basepaths. Born David Jefferson, he played baseball at Dixon College in northern Illinois, where he studied law. The Dixon team traveled to Rockford to play a series of exhibition games with the local Three-I League club. Jones was instrumental in the college team's victories, and he was persuaded to sign with the professional club after the end of the college season. He appeared in 77 games for the Rockford Red Sox, winning the league batting title with a .384 average. That was enough to attract the notice of the majors, and the Chicago Orphans (soon to be renamed the Cubs) bought his contract. Jones decided to sign instead with the new American League Brewers, joining them for the last month of the 1901 season. When the Brewers left town after the end of the season he went to St. Louis with them, but wouldn't stay long. Mike Grahek profiled Jones for the Society of American Baseball Research's Baseball Biography Project, and described the outfielder's next moves:

When the Brewers moved to St. Louis after the 1901 season, Jones took advantage of a clause in his AL contract which prevented transferring a player to a new city without his consent. The young lawyer signed with Chicago, which still owned his rights within organized baseball. Later that winter he jumped back to St. Louis, but played in only 15 games in 1902 before jumping back to Chicago after Orphans owner James Hart offered Davy a fifty percent raise and $500 signing bonus. All told, Jones had jumped four different contracts in a nine-month span. Jones left his Browns teammates without a word on the morning of May 14 and was patrolling centerfield for the Cubs that afternoon. Though a major leaguer for barely a month all told, Davy was quickly gaining a reputation for jumping contracts whenever a better offer came along. The Chicago Tribune referred to him as a "rubber-leg," and Chicago fans even quit teasing fellow outfielder Jimmy Slagle, another noted jumper, out of deference to Jones. As Jones himself said later, "a contract didn't mean anything in those days."

Jones broke his leg in a home-plate collision on July 4, 1904, and when he struggled upon returning to the lineup in mid-August the Cubs sold him to the Minneapolis Millers. He blossomed in Minneapolis, catching the eye of scouts for the Detroit Tigers.

1907 AL Champion Detroit Tigers
(Jones is second row, far left)

Jones started in left field for Detroit, opposite Ty Cobb who was then playing in right. Jones became the Georgia Peach's best friend on the Tigers, often having to relay signals on the field from teammates with whom Cobb was not on speaking terms. He also claimed to have encouraged Cobb to invest in the stock market; Cobb put his money in a local business—Coca-Cola—and made millions.

He also supported Cobb in one of the man's darkest hours. On May 15, 1912, the Tigers were playing the Highlanders at the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan. Cobb was heckled mercilessly by a New York fan, and when the taunts turned racist, Cobb hurled himself into the stands and fought with the man. Jones was one of a few Tigers to follow Cobb into the seats, but was far more helpful in the aftermath than he was in the melee. American League president Ban Johnson suspended Cobb immediately and fined him $500. In response, the Tigers went on strike and refused to play their next game; Cobb might not have been personally popular, but he was their star player. Drawing on his legal training, Jones represented the players at a meeting with Johnson and the other league owners. He successfully argued that the suspension was unfair and that the players deserved protection while on the field. The fine and suspension were lifted, the Tigers were back in uniform, and Jones would later describe this as a formative event in the long struggle to unionize the sport.

While still an active player, Jones bought a drugstore in Detroit, and worked it in the offseason. He retired from playing in 1913 and went to work full-time as a druggist. When it came time to retire from business as well, he and his wife moved back to the Milwaukee area. He died in 1972. A memorial to Jones was erected in 2006 on the grounds of the Cambria-Friesland Historical Society in his native Cambria, Wisconsin.

Three very interesting men, with long careers in their chosen sport. I would love to know what they talked about on that evening of July 9, 1960. Good for the Braves, to recognize and embrace the long history of baseball in Milwaukee.

1914 Signed Ball

This amazing signed baseball recently came up for auction at MEARS:

1914 Milwaukee Brewers Team Signed Official American Association Baseball w/ 22 Signatures Including Happy Felch, Pep Clark, Joe Hovlick & More (JSA)

Offered is a blue & red stitched AJ Reach Official American Association baseball which has been signed by 22 members of the 1914 Milwaukee Brewers. Those to have signed include future participant in the Chicago Black Sox scandal Happy Felch, Pep Clark, John Hughes-Mulgrew, Phil Lewis, Joe Hovlik, Irv Young, Earl Smith, Alfred Braun, Ralph Cutting, Leo McGraw, Tom Dougherty, Jack Sheehan, JP Burg, Tom Jones, John Shackelford, Jim Jones, Jap Barbeau, Cy Slapnicka and more. "910 536/24" also handwritten on baseball which remains in excellent overall condition given its advanced vintage. An interesting note is that during the 1914 season, he was listed in period newspaper accounts as "Felch" but later with the White Sox, he was listed as "Felsch."

Wow. What a beauty. I love the blue and red stitching on the official American Association ball.

This amazing piece set somebody back $1,299 including the buyer's premium. If you're the lucky new owner (or the lucky old one) drop me a line - I'd love to talk with you about the other gems in your collection!

The Ballpark at the Museum

Visitors to the Milwaukee Public Museum are greeted by many spectacular images as they enter. Those who come in from Wells or James Lovell Streets are greeted by a majestic entryway, all marble and windows, the IMAX theater on the right and the museum on the left. Those that come in the back way, from the parking garage, are treated to a different but no-less-impressive view: a window into the past.

This photo, enlarged and spread over both walls of a corner, shows Athletic Park in its relative youth. Looks like Opening Day or some other special occasion, to be so crowded. The men in their jackets and hats and the ladies (what few of them there are) in their bustles and corsets and shirts. And hats.

Looks 1910s to me, but I'm not sure I know this specific photograph. It's not labeled. Need to do more research.

Today in 1914 - Game Two!

Like out streaking 2014 National League Brewers, the Brewers of 1914 were off to a red-hot start. They followed up their Opening Day 4-0 win over the St. Paul with another shutout victory, this time a 3-0 blanking of the Saints.


Pitcher Joe Hovlik took the mound for Milwaukee, while former Washington Senators hurler Dixie Walker got the got the start for the visitors. Walker would later have a son who inherited the nickname and who, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, asked in 1947 to be traded rather than play with Jackie Robinson.

This game was closer than the final score suggests; as you can tell from the box score, one half-inning made all the difference for the Brews. The Saints hit Hovlik's pitches hard right from the first, they couldn't manage to convert a singe hit until the top of the fourth, as center fielder Charlie Hemphill beat out an infield hit. St. Paul's elation was short-lived, as on the next pitch Milwaukee catcher John Hughes caught Hemphill trying to steal second with a bullet throw to shortstop William Joseph "Jap" Barbeau. Another four scoreless frames followed.

It wasn't until the bottom of the eighth that either team managed to get on the board. With one out, right fielder Johnny Beall lined a clean infield single, moving to second on an error. Center fielder Happy Felch brought him home with a double. Felch himself scored on a triple from second baseman Phil Lewis, who came home on Hughes' sacrifice fly. That was enough for the Brewers to cruise to victory.

The short streak would end the following afternoon, as the Saints managed a measure of revenge by beating the Brewers 4-1; but as any Milwaukee fan can tell you, a winning streak is a lot of fun while it lasts.

Today in 1914 - Opening Day!

One hundred years ago today, Milwaukee turned out in force to watch their Brewers open the 1914 season at Athletic Park. And what a game - the hometown boys defeated the visiting St. Paul Saints 4-0.

The Milwaukee Sentinel gave its readers this first look at the game:

The next morning, they followed up with photos from the game:

Top row—Left to Right—Centerfield Bleachers—A Fair Rooter. Bottom row—Jap Barbeau Watching a Foul; John Beall Sprinting Home After His Home Run; Happy Felch Lining Out Triple.

The champions look very sporty in their new white caps and striped socks.

The Milwaukee Journal took a slightly different tack, contrasting a photo of the players with one of "the youngest fan" at the ballpark.

The Brewers started their title defense in fine form. 1914 was looking like a good year for Milwaukee and her Brews.