1976 Borchert Field Postcard

The demolition of Borchert Field was completed on June 11, 1953, but the ballpark lingered longer in the memories of fans.

This "short run color" postcard of a very quiet Borchert Field was printed in 1976. That makes it something of an oddity, produced during the fallow period after the Brewers were dead and buried—indeed, anyone at that time interested in past Milwaukee clubs would probably have stopped at the Braves—but before the retro craze revived mass commercial interest in old clubs and their ballparks.

The photo itself, credited to Harold Esch, is undated, but perhaps we can narrow down the timeframe.

We can start with the light standards. The infield lights are casting a shadow from behind the camera, but are not visible. That helps, because those poles were originally placed on the field in front of the grandstand, and were moved outside the park in early 1942. So we know if it can't be any earlier than that.

The outfield ads along that right field fence might be a better bet. They don't match the ads we know were in place in 1952. So 1952 is too late.

We can go one year earlier; this photo of first baseman George Crowe was taken in 1951.

The three outfield ads right behind him match perfectly. (click for larger)

They are, from left, Hooligan's Super Bar at the corner of Farwell and North Avenues, Burghardt Athletic Goods (which had a long relationship with the Brews, even supplying their uniforms) and finally the Milwaukee Wood Fuel Co..

On the other hand, the billboard to the left doesn't match.

And there's a large billboard over his shoulder that doesn't seem appear on the postcard.

So that would seem to set the last date it could have been taken. Let's see if we can narrow down the earliest.

In 1947, April snow forced the postponement of Opening Day. From the Milwaukee Journal coverage, we get a good look at the right field wall, as team secretary Fredric (Shorty) Mendelson gazes forlornly across the infield.

It's an almost perfect match for the angle of Mr. Esch's postcard photo, allowing us to compare the ads plastered across the right field wall.

Although we can't make out all the ads in our 1947 photo, we can see clearly enough to establish that four visible billboards match our postcard:

Those are the same three from our George Crowe photo, plus Checker Cab Company on the extreme left.

There are, however, two billboards which just as obviously don't match.

I can't quite make out the left one on the postcard but the right is for WTMJ TV. The newspaper photo shows something different. So not 1947.

I don't know how often the ads changed over; I'd expect some minor turnover every winter, but not within the baseball season. It seems reasonable to expect at least some ads to remain the same from year to year. There may be one other clue on that wall, though. Look at the foul line: it runs right over the Milwaukee Wood Fuel Company's ad.

Very unusual; you'd expect the ads to be placed so that the foul line ran between them rather than through one. The original foul line was, in fact, along the right edge of that last billboard. It was moved as part of a general overhaul of the ballpark after the 1946 season, when the Boston Braves bought the team. One of the changes they made was moving home plate, shrinking the outfield but also improving the park's notorious sightlines. Moving the plate also required moving the foul poles, in this case thirteen feet to the north, resulting in the bisected ad.

The trees appear to be in full leaf, indicating that it was taken during the spring or summer. We know that the spring of 1947 was unseasonably cold, and it seems unlikely that the outfield walls would have been repainted so soon after the park was overhauled, so I'll say we're now talking about early 1948 as the earliest possible date.

Our window is now between 1948 and 1950. That's pretty good, but I'll keep looking and see if I can't get it any closer than that.

Two Stories About the Milwaukee Journal's "Brownie"

by Dennis Pajot

Anyone who reads about the Milwaukee Brewers in the first two decades of the 20th Century will know the name "Brownie". Brownie was the Milwaukee Journal sports writer, covering baseball and other sports during this time. Brownie's real name was William Wallace Rowland. Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1878, Rowland joined the Journal staff at the age of 12, as an office boy. He was known as "Wallie" around the office, but took the nickname Brownie as a young sports writer. Rowland remained with the Milwaukee Journal for 54 years, working as a reporter, sports editor, staff photographer, Green Sheet editor, city editor, assistant managing editor, automobile editor, and promotion editor. In 1936 he was elected to the board of directors and seven years later was elected a vice-president of the company.

The story that interested me was published upon his death in 1944, by Journal writer Sam Levy.

The first sports editor to accompany a baseball team to spring training and on road trips, Brownie liked to recalled the early days of his reportorial career. His closest friend in those days, more than 30 years ago, was L.M. Nahin, late business manager of the Brewers.

One spring, when the Brewers trained at Cairo, Ill., the Ohio river went on a rampage. The club prepared to break camp and leave the flooded country. That day, Nahin received a telegram from Milwaukee notifying him of the death of Charles Havenor, president of the Brewers. Nahin did not have enough ready funds to move the club from Cairo and he had to hurry back to Milwaukee to make arrangements for Havenor's funeral. He left his friend Brownie in charge of the club.

"Get the players out of here somehow," he told Brownie.

Brownie, too, was low in funds. He took his large diamond ring, which was set in a Brownie setting, and pawned it. And he moved the Brewers out of town.

Brownie trailed two Brewer pennant winning teams, the champions of 1913-14. He loved to reminisce about those days. One of his favorite stories was about his mother. The club left Milwaukee on a long road trip. It lost most of its early games. The players blamed their defeats to the absence of their lucky mascot.

"You're the only one who can get our mascot to join us immediately and bring us luck again," the players told Brownie. The next morning the lucky mascot was back with the Brewers. She was Brownie's mother. She made the rest of the road trip and the boys won the pennant.

I have done extensive research on the Brewers' 1912, 1913 and 1914 seasons, and have put together lengthy manuscripts on these years. Unfortunately, I did not run across these stories, but as we all know things can be missed while researching any subject. Both stories have enough truth to them to be taken with some value.

That it rained heavily in Cairo, Illinois, can be verified from newspaper reports of spring 1912. And certainly club owner Charles Havenor passed away on April 3, 1912, while the Brewers were in Illinois.

But the situation was a little more complicated. It had been raining for some days in Cairo and the Ohio River was rising to flood level.

On April 1 the Brewer regulars traveled to Fulton, Kentucky, to play an exhibition game against the St. Louis Cardinals. Heavy rain forced the cancellation of the game before the end.

HERE IS HOW DUFFY'S BOYS LOOKED BEFORE THE FLOODS

Top left, Chapelle at bat. Wingo, St. Louis, catching. Right, Gilhooley at bat. Schalk catching. Middle, Duffy coaching at third. Doc Marshall giving Anderson, Brewers' battery signals. Pitcher Anderson in action. Bottom, Charles scoring first run of game with Cardinals.

(photo by Brownie)

The players remained in Fulton, while Manager Hugh Duffy traveled to Harrisburg, Illinois, to look for grounds.

Duffy now had a problem. His regulars were in Fulton with business manager Louis Nahin, where flooding was getting worse. His back-up players and recruits were in the flooded city of Cairo. Duffy got his second squad out of Cairo, taking them to Danville, Illinois, a town much further north. The next evening the first squad arrived safely in Danville. Louis Nahin took the train home for the important matters back in Milwaukee.

The Brewers practiced and played exhibition games in Danville, before opening the regular season in Toledo. Manager Hugh Duffy was with the team until a day before the season opened, when he traveled to St. Paul to attempt to pick up a player.

The newspaper reports from Brownie back to Milwaukee during this period indicate he was with the team in Fulton and went to Harrisburg. Brownie then went to Danville. However, in one report (on April 3—the day Duffy got his second squad into Danville) Brownie said he had left Danville, but was not clear where he was traveling to.

Thus, the story of Brownie moving the team out of Cairo could be true. He could have pawned his ring to get the back-up players and recruits out of Cairo to Danville. Or when he left Danville he could have traveled to Fulton and helped get the players out of that city, moving them to Danville.

The story regarding Brownie's mother is not that hard to see as the truth. Players were (and still are) rather superstitious, and no doubt would see the luck in having a writer's mother with them if things had been going their way when she was there. The Brewers did have a mascot in these same years of 1913 and 1914, the goat named Fatima. The goat did not travel with the Brewers, so why not Brownie's mother?

When this would have occurred during the 1913 or 1914 seasons, I have not been able to pinpoint. I have gone through my game by game win-loss records for both seasons and can find only one particular streak that would fit this description.

The Brewers left on a road trip, and from July 29 to August 7, 1913 lost seven of the first nine games played. The team then won nine of the next ten games before returning home.

However, there are three other road losing stretches that could fit into the description, depending how one cares to interpret what was written so many years later. Earlier in the 1913 season the Brewers went on a road trip and lost seven of the first nine games, but then had only one game left—which they won—before returning home.

In July 1914 the Brewers lost seven in a row in Columbus and Cleveland. However, this was in the middle of a long road trip in which the club had won already won 8 of 12 games from Kansas City, Louisville and Indianapolis. After the losing streak the Brewers beat Cleveland twice before returning home.

"Brownie" as sports editor in 1914, "his office papered with cartoons and calendars".

In August 1914 the Brewers left town and lost three of five in Columbus, then split four games in Cleveland before losing all four in Indianapolis. The team then bounced back to finish the road trip winning three of four in Louisville.

So, we cannot pinpoint this series. And maybe all the facts are not straight in the flood story. But aren't they good stories, even if the truth cannot be totally proven?

Who is That Mystery Man?

The LIFE Magazine photo archive on Google once again reveals new treasures.

You have to get creative with the search terms, though. Every new search term you add yields an entirely different set of results. Under a search for "world series braves" we find this series of photos of the 1957 World Championship parade down Wisconsin Avenue.

The item of particular interest to Brewers fans comes from these two photos of the Milwaukee Braves Boosters. At the left edge of the frame, next to the Boosters, we get a glimpse of a familiar uniform:

Does that group look like they know how to party, or what? Hilda's got her cowbell at the ready.

Unfortunately, there aren't any better photos of our mystery man, at least none yet posted. The photographer, Yale Joel, doesn't appear to have been particularly interested in him beyond his proximity to the Braves Boosters.

While we don't get a good look at him, we do know a little bit about his jersey. The patriotic "HEALTH" patch was worn on all major league jerseys in 1942 before being replaced by a stars-and-stripes shield. The American Association also wore the patch, and so far as I know, dropped it at the same time. The zip-front jersey with sleeve and neck piping would have been worn that year.

So we have what appears to be an older gentleman wearing a fifteen-year-old uniform to the Milwaukee Braves victory parade. But who is he? Does anybody recognize him? Could he be a former player, turned up to the parade in his old duds like a veteran at the Memorial Day parade? So many questions....

Hat tip once again to Hat tip to Lance Smith for continuing to teach me how to navigate the nigh-impenetrable archive. I can't help but wonder what other old Brews items are hidden out there, obscured by Google's poor search tagging.