Greetings from "Milwakuee"

The Brewers and Marlins are playing their Milwaukee Bears throwback game now. Full recap to come but just had to share this tidbit:

That's Brewer skipper Ron Roenicke with the creative spelling.

We've been having a lot of fun with this on Twitter:

And, of course, it didn't take too long for the rest of the InterWebs to pick up on the chatter:

We'll see what else this game has in store.

"The Great White Hope" at the Orchard

By Pete Ehrmann

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Editor's Note: Today our resident boxing expert brings us the story of a very unusual event held at the Orchard on July 18th, 1909.

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It's a safe bet nobody yelled "Kill the umpire!" during the semi-pro ballgame between City League powerhouses Sissons & Sewells and the McGreals at Athletic Park 104 years ago today. In fact, the chunky, balding, middle-aged guy calling strikes and balls behind home plate was the one most of the 4,200 fans came to the ballpark at 8th and Chambers Sts. to see.

When they didn't see as much of him as expected, some nasty things were yelled about Milwaukee Mayor David Rose, who prevented guest umpire James J. Jeffries from going through with an advertised post-game sparring exhibition and showing what he had in store for his next opponent.

Given his druthers, the boxer known as "Big Jeff," "The Boilermaker" (his pre-boxing profession) and now "The Great White Hope" would never have left the West Coast alfalfa farm to which he retired in 1905 after his undefeated six year reign as heavyweight champion of the world.

Jeffries before his first retirement

For one thing, Jeffries had beaten all the credible challengers to his supremacy in the ring – or at least the ones on the white side of the color line he and his titular predecessors John L. Sullivan, James J. Corbett, and Bob Fitzsimmons had voluntarily drawn to prevent the most respected title in sports from falling into racially inferior hands.

For another, Jeffries was by nature sulky and grouchy and hated the spotlight perpetually trained on the world's greatest boxer.

After he retired from boxing at 30, Jeff gained 100 pounds, smoked cigarettes and lived the life of an agrarian potentate – until damned fool Tommy Burns violated the heavyweight champion's code and risked the precious title on December 26, 1908 against African-American Jack Johnson, and the worst nightmare of white society came true.

	Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson

Johnson won when police stopped the fight in the 15th round. Writing from ringside in Sydney, Australia, novelist Jack London likened the spectacle to "a playful Ethiopian at loggerheads with a small and futile white man (and) a grown man cuffing a naughty child… There was never so one-sided a world's championship fight in the history of the ring."

London ended his dispatch with the infamous words, "But one thing now remains. Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face. Jeff, it's up to you. The White Man must be rescued."

The novelist's bugle call echoed around the world and intensified as Jack Johnson jauntily went through a succession of white challengers and white mistresses. Big Jeff resisted until public clamor for him to come back – and the prospect of a $100,000 payday if he did – became too great to ignore.

Without committing himself to anything, in the spring of 1909 Jeffries announced that he would go so far as to see what kind of shape he could whip himself into. He hired fellow Californian Sam Berger as both his manager and sparring partner. After winning the first Olympic Games heavyweight championship in 1904, when boxing made its Olympic debut in St. Louis, Berger turned professional and was viewed as a potential successor to Jeffries himself until a couple fights proved otherwise.

In mid-'09, Jeff and Berger embarked on a national tour to keep the drumbeat for a Johnson fight going steady and loud, as well as rake in some easy dough.

Jeffries and Berger, 1909

Milwaukee was their penultimate stop, after Chicago and before Minneapolis. The plan was for Jeff to umpire the game at Athletic Field and then change into his boxing duds and spar three one-minute rounds with Berger in a ring set up over home plate.

For all Jeff's popularity, the announcement on July 4 of his first-ever visit to Milwaukee two weeks hence was met with skepticism by some sportswriters who wondered if he was serious about fighting Johnson to begin with, and, if so, how dancing around with Sam Berger for three minutes per appearance was helping him prepare for it. Championship fights then were 45 three-minute rounds.

"The Boilermaker is picking up all kinds of soft money boxing one-minute rounds with Berger," wrote Jeff Thompson in the Milwaukee Free Press. "After seeing Jeff spar with his manager, the sharps express the opinion that the big fellow's wind has gone, and that he could never recover it. In fact, they agree that Jeff has no idea of fighting again."

"Just how many Milwaukee people will fall for this it remains to be seen," said The Milwaukee Journal, "but it's a cinch that unless Jeffries shows more signs of activity than he has in some of these other affairs of the same brand, he won't make a very big hit with a Milwaukee crowd, for they are very strong on getting something for their money."

But excitement about – and ticket sales for – Jeff's appearance in Milwaukee took off on July 16 when word went out that while he was in town the ex-heavyweight champion (who some in the media insisted was still the champion because Jeffries had abdicated and not lost the title in the ring) might finally post forfeit money committing himself to fight Johnson [he didn't] – and that Johnson himself intended to show up at Athletic Park for a look at the Great White Hope.

To make things even more interesting, the next day a local man named Billy Miller, another boilermaker-turned-boxer, challenged Jeffries to take him on instead of Berger at the ballpark. "Miller believes he can hold his own with the undefeated champion and would let him extend himself much more than Berger does in these exhibitions," said the Free Press.

A brass band greeted the man a Milwaukee Sentinel editorial called "the most talked of personage in our country at the present time" at the Northwestern railroad depot at 8 a.m. on July 18, and escorted Jeffries and Berger to the Pfister Hotel. The Milwaukee Athletic Club hosted a reception for them before the baseball game, which started at 2:30 p.m.

Jack Johnson wasn't around, and if Billy Miller was he remained incognito. Jeffries probably wished he hadn't shown up, either, when Berger took the field after Sissons & Sewells beat McGreals 6-5 and announced to the crowd that there would be no sparring exhibition to follow because Mayor Rose had refused to grant the necessary permit.

In fact, Rose had denied the permit application three days earlier, but the promoters had conveniently neglected to tell anyone.

There was a state statute prohibiting prize fighting in Wisconsin. Bouts were still allowed at local theaters at the sufferance of the mayor, a boxing fan, but in this case, explained Mayor Rose later Sunday evening, "I had to refuse them because the champion [Jeffries] and his manager were to appear in ring costume. We cannot permit this in the open, especially in a place like Athletic Park, surrounded by dwellings. They can spar for exhibition as much as they like in theaters."

"When Berger announced to the crowd that the bout had been called off there was a whole lot of grumbling," reported the Free Press, "but after he had explained the situation they took the disappointment good naturedly."

(Whether that would've been the case had it been Jack Johnson – routinely denigrated in the local press as a "dinge" and "coon" – who disappointed them is a whole 'nother matter.)

The crowd was further mollified when Big Jeff came out in his workout clothes to skip rope, shadow box and do some exercises.

"The great majority of the spectators had never seen a fighter go through his training stunts and appeared to enjoy it hugely," reported the Sentinel the next day. "The sight of a big fellow of Jeff's size skipping the rope like a schoolgirl caused a whole lot of glee in the stands, but when he discarded the rope and started dancing around and smiting an imaginary foe he brought down the house – or rather the bleachers."

"He was a trifle chubby at the waistline," the Sentinel report continued, "but otherwise he appeared to be in fair condition. Whether he will ever get back into condition for a grueling fight, however, is a question which only time will answer."

Not much for elocution, Big Jeff allowed only that he would "knock the block off that [insert Paula Dean epithet here]" if he and Johnson ever fought.

They did, and he didn't. When the "Fight of the Century" finally happened in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, Johnson gave the Great White Hope a beating for 15 rounds until it was stopped. There were deadly race riots around the country afterwards.

On This Day in 1913 - the Brews Play 19 Innings

On July 16, 1913, the Brewers welcomed the Columbus Senators to Athletic Park for a meeting between the top two clubs in the American Association.

The Brews were tearing up the Association with a record of 56-36, but the Senators were right on their heels in second place.

Joe Hovlik started on the mound for the Brewers, but struggled right out of the gate. He walked the first Senator he faced, then gave up a long sacrifice fly and a pair of long singles and with them a run. Sharp fielding from his infield kept the damage from being worse, and the Brewers were only down 1-0 when they came up to bat. The Brewer batters spotted him two runs in the bottom of the first, but Hovlik gave Columbus back the lead in the third inning when third baseman/manager Pep Clark had seen enough and pulled him.

Clark sent lefty Ralph Cutting in to throw. Cutting gave up a quick two-run homer but then settled down. The Brewers had a chance to go ahead in the fifth when Newt Randall led off with a single. Shortstop Russell "Lena" Blackburne followed with a single to center, leaving Randall on second. The Columbus first baseman, Ray Miller, bobbled the next grounder, and Randall made a wide turn at third before heading back to the bag. Blackburne, seeing his teammate break for home, kept running and when the ball arrived at third both Brewers were standing there waiting for it. This rare baserunning error cost the Brews dearly, as they then loaded the bases before Clark lined out to end the inning.

In the sixth, the Brewers managed to plate a run, cutting the Senators' lead to two. Cutting was pulled for a pinch-hitter, and Buster Braun was sent out to pitch in the seventh.

Throughout all these Milwaukee pitching changes, Columbus starter Jack Ferry stayed in the game, pitching himself out of every jam as the Brewer bats continued to come up short. Ferry had "a big, sweeping curve and a beautiful drop," and he used them both to his advantage.

The Brewers were still down 5-3 as they came up to bat in the bottom of the ninth. Three outs left to salvage a victory. Randall popped out to lead off, but second baseman Phil Lewis scratched out an infield hit. Next up was Blackburne, who sent a shot into right. Lewis moved to third and scored when Miller again bobbled the throw in from right. The Brewers were back in the game.

That brought up Tom Jones. The 36-year-old first baseman had played in the American League from 1904 through 1910, first for the Browns and then in Detroit, before Brewer owner Charles Havenor convinced the Tigers to part with him in 1911. As a veteran, Jones was a leader in the clubhouse and on the field, and had assumed managerial duties on a few occasions when the skipper was sick or scouting talent.

Jones slapped a weak grounder to third but managed to beat the throw to first, scoring Blackburne and sending the game into extra innings.

The Brews managed to hold the Sens scoreless in the top of the tenth, but put up their own goose egg in the bottom half. And so it went through the eleventh inning.

In the twelfth, the home fans thought the game might be over when Tom Jones lined a drive all the way to the scoreboard in Athletic Park's deep center field. Unfortunately for the Athletic Park faithful, the big slugger got greedy, and was cut down at third trying to stretch his solid double into a triple.

Clark pulled Braun in the fourteenth inning so Joe Berg could bat for him, but the Brewers failed to score and had to take the field again, this time with Cy Slapnicka on the mound. Slapnicka picked up right where Braun left off, "pitch(ing) rings around the enemy".

The Senators kept going down in order; the Brewer pitchers had found their rhythm now. Unfortunately, so had Ferry. The Columbus starter was still in the game, and still managed to pitch his way out of trouble.

The nineteenth inning started out just as the previous nine had, with the Columbus batters retired and the tie holding fast. But in the bottom, the Brews were finally able to break through with a marvelous example of what we would now call "small ball."

The rally began with a "smoking drive to center" off the bat of Blackburne. Following him up to bat was John Beall. The centerfielder had been purchased from the Cleveland Indians just a few weeks earlier to bring more power to the Brewers' lineup, and he came through with a smash to right, sending Blackburne to third.

Now with men on the corners and nobody out, Tom Jones strode once again to the plate.

This time, Clark had something more creative up his sleeve. He called for a squeeze play, Jones laid down a perfect bunt up the first base line, and by the time the Columbus first baseman even got his glove near the ball Blackburne had crossed the plate to end the game.

The final score was 6 to 5, Milwaukee. Slapnicka was credited the win, Jack Ferry with the loss. The young Columbus hurler had pitched all nineteen innings, inspiring the Milwaukee Sentinel's Manning Vaughan to write:

(Ferry's) work was so finished and polished that it was too bad he couldn't grab the glory. The youthful right hander had almost uncanny control, for he (walked) but two men during the nineteen chapters of play. He was also at his best when danger threatened and time and again he pitched himself out of hot water without batting an eyelash. More power to him!

The Milwaukee Journal ran its recap under the headline "A NINETEEN INNING VICTORY DOESN'T COUNT FOR ANY MORE IN PERCENTAGE COLUMN BUT IT'S LOTS OF FUN TO WIN ONE". And so it was. Newsboys were dispatched from the Journal building with stacks of the "Peach Sheet," a two-page baseball edition hastily printed with game recaps. It was a matter of pride to get them to the ballpark in time to sell to departing fans, but on this day the task was especially difficult:

At 6 o'clock the Journal building was the meeting place of a crowd of men waiting eagerly for the papers to roll off the press. When they were finally informed that the Brewers had won out, a loud cheer went up.

It was the same story in all parts of the city. Along the Seventh-st car line, where The Journal Peaches found their way, the boys were mobbed by the fans, eager to read all about the big game. At Seventh and Walnut-sts the boy was hardly able to get off his motorcycle before the fans had started to grab the Peach...

This was the final box score:

On This Day in 1913 - Larry Chappelle sold to the Sox

One hundred years ago today, the Brewers sold their star slugger, Larry Chappelle, to the Chicago White Sox.

Chapelle, the center fielder, had been batting .349 for the Brews. In exchange for the slugger, the Brewers got outfielder John Beall, a catcher, and $15,000 in cash.

Beall had been a Brewer earlier in the season, when the Cleveland Indians sold him to the Brewers before he had finished clearing waivers. The White Sox stepped in and claimed him after he had played a mere three games in a Brewer uniform. That left a bad taste in the mouth of many Brewer fans, and as sad as they were to see Chappelle go, sending him to Chicago's south side made it worse.

Chappelle, of course, was understandably thrilled to get his shot in the bigs.

Just three days earlier, readers of the Milwaukee Journal had been treated to this photo collage from cartoonist Cad Brand.

Now that big gun would have a crack at major league pitches, and the Brewers had an important piece of their roster returned to them. Would a Beall-for-Chappelle trade help the Brewers to the pennant? In July of 1913, nobody could say for sure.

Return of the Pinstripes?

Reader Michael Mastauskas sent in an interesting tip via Facebook - could we be seeing a new return to pinstripes in the Brewers' near-future?

No, not those. These pinstripes.

This black-and-white cap was spotted by Michael in a Lids store in Milwaukee. It's also on Lids.com:

According to the tag, the Brewers will be wearing this cap in 2013. This appears to be an honest-to-goodness leak; it hasn't yet made it to the Brewers' online shop.

The cap belongs to this uniform, the Brewers' "Milwaukee Bears" 1923 throwback, worn every year in a Negro Leagues Tribute Game:

At least, it's what the Brewers used to wear in those games. From the event's inception in 2006 through 2008, they took the field in the black-and-white pinstripes. In 2009, however, the throwback was re-designed in cream and royal blue:

And now, they appear to have switched back to the pinstriped throwbacks. I haven't seen any announcements to that effect, but I can't think of any other reason why this cap would surface now.

So which of these two uniforms is historically accurate? We don't know.

I originally thought that the new 2009 overhaul was the result of some new information about the old club, but this move obviously makes me question that assumption.

The Milwaukee Bears were a Negro National League team that played only one season at Borchert Field before disbanding. That brief tenure, combined with the spirit of the time, means that there is a distinct lack of information about the club today. I'm not aware of any of their uniforms surviving, nor have I even seen a photograph. I suspect that the uniforms the Brewers have worn are a combination of conjecture and wild guesses.

So why the change back to an old version of the throwback uniform? Perhaps the Brewers felt the old style had become stale after four seasons. Perhaps blue and white jerseys with "BEARS" proudly splashed across the front weren't huge sellers in Milwaukee. The city name would certainly seem more popular at the cash register.

Shame; I loved the old blue cap, which was never commercially available outside of Milwaukee. Classic, yet distinctive, the kind of logo our National League Brewers could adopt with pride.

This year has seen greatly increased distribution of these sorts of one-off caps into the nationwide retail market, and I was really hoping that I'd finally be able to pick one up.

The Brewers play their 8th Annual Negro Leagues Tribute Game at Miller Park on Saturday, July 20th. This is traditionally a popular game, but tickets are still available - you could see these throwback uniforms in person!

"Through These Eyes", 1943

On April 28, 1943, Charlie Grimm and his Brewers boarded the noon Hiawatha train from Milwaukee to Minneapolis, preparing to open the season on the road against the Millers on the following day.

Fans left behind in Milwaukee didn't have to worry about missing any of the action, according to this ad which ran in the Milwaukee Sentinel on that morning:

Amos "Red" Thisted, a World War I veteran and graduate of Marquette University, joined the Sentinel staff in 1924. He was covering golf in the summer of 1925 when he was asked to fill in as an occasional substitute covering Brewer games. His work was quickly noticed, and Red took over the Brewer beat at the beginning of the following season.

Red added the World Series to his beat, and became the Sentinel's resident expert in both baseball and all things relating to his alma mater. He traveled to the first Cotton Bowl in 1937 as Marquette's Golden Avalanche fell to TCU, 16-6.

	Thisted in 1968

Red had an amazing attendance record at the Orchard. He was there for every Brewer home game from Opening Day in 1926 through the final season in 1952, before moving his streak to County Stadium and the Braves. The streak continued through 3,282 consecutive home games, and was broken only when the Braves moved to Atlanta. Add to that the games he covered on the road, such as 1943's Opening Day in Minneapolis, and "these eyes" saw more than 5,000 Milwaukee baseball games.

Thisted was widely recognized for his work. In 1938, he was elected president of the American Association of Baseball Writers. He also served as president of the Milwaukee chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America and was on the Board of Directors of its national body. In 1952, Thisted was honored by the Old-Time Baseball Players' Association for "contributions to Milwaukee baseball." In 1960, Marquette honored him with its Byline award for outstanding achievement in journalism. Red was also selected as the official scorer for the Milwaukee Braves from 1953-62, the 1955 All-Star Game and the 1958 World Series.

Thisted retired from the Sentinel in 1968, and passed away in 1977.

1938 Score Card

This score card was sold at Borchert Field during the 1938 season.

The print is single-color brown on one long piece of cardstock, gatefolded into a 7 x 10 inch scorecard and sold for 5 cents (which seems to have been standard back to 1914).

One other thing that never seemed to change: Lucky Number contests.

This one's even better: a trivia quiz about the advertisements, just to make sure you were actually reading them.

Another contest common to these scorecards is the "Most Popular Player" variety. The eventual winner will receive a handsome traveling suitcase and a $50 watch ($826.05 in 2013 dollars!). Let's look at the leaders so far:

• Whit Wyatt was the Brewers' ace in 1938 finishing with a record of 23-7. No wonder he was so popular at the Orchard. He had come to the Brewers from the American League, where he had pitched for the Tigers, White Sox and Indians. The Brewers sold him to the Dodgers at the end of the season. With "Dem Bums" in September of 1941, Wyatt no-hit the Boston Braves to clinch a pennant for Brooklyn.
• In second place at the time was Oscar Grimes. He played second for the Brews in 1938, and went on to a nine-year major league career with Cleveland, the Yankees and Philadelphia Athletics.
• William "Rush" Hankins, backup catcher and jack-of-all trades, was coming in third. He had a promising season before being sold to the Minneapolis Millers, who shipped him off to the Williamsport (PA) Grays. He returned to the Brewers for one more disappointing season in 1940.
• Fourth place was Mickey Heath, popular first baseman. He would eventually become player/manager, then coach and broadcaster.
• In fifth place, bringing up the rear, we have right-handed pitcher Joe Heving. Heving was an instrumental part of the Brewers' pennant-winning club in 1936, and following the '38 season was sold to the Red Sox.

In order to vote, a fan had to tear out a section of the score card and drop it in a ballot box at one of Borchert Field's exits.

The next two pages detail the lineups for this particular game, the Toledo Mud Hens on the first and the hometown Brewers on the second.

That's Fred Haney managing the Hens. He would of course go to become an important part of Cream City baseball history as manager of the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and 1958.

Interestingly, according to this there was not a single starting player on either club wearing a jersey number in the single digits.

There's team broadcaster Alan Hale there at the WISN microphone.

Another page, another Lucky Number contest. This one was sponsored by Klein & Co. I'm also intrigued by the notion that you could buy tomato juice "in glass bottles" at the ballpark; somehow I don't think they were giving Miller High Life a run for its money.

Clark's Super Gas is "always good for a home run." Clark's would become an important sponsor of the Brews in later years, with their logo on the cover of every score card from at least 1942 through the 1950s.

Finally, we get to the back cover. Traditionally reserved for a beer ad, we instead get a full-pager for Hotpoint refrigerators.

Another tear-off coupon; it's a wonder that any score cards survived intact.

Sailor Helf Visits the Orchard, 1944

For this Fourth of July week, we have a patriotic photo of former Brewer catcher Hank Helf, recently enlisted in the Navy, visiting Borchert Field in June 1944.

—Journal Staff Photo by Harris W. Nowell

Take a bow, sailor. And Hank Helf gets a big hand. The former Brewer catcher is pictured in the dugout when he was a visitor to Borchert Field while en route from San Diego, Calif., to Bainbridge, Md., for specialist training. He saw his former teammates win a double-header, which made the visit particularly worthwhile.

Lot of interest in this photo, not the least of which is Borchert Field's angled dugouts. Squeezing a ballpark into a single city block resulted in some very creative use of space. I also like the triangular notch sticking out into the field.

1943 Grand Studio card

Helf came to Milwaukee in 1937 on a one-year loan from the Cleveland Indians, which had a "working agreement" with the Brewers at the time. He was the Brews' backup catcher that year before being recalled to Cleveland, where he played in a handful of games but spent most of the 1938 season on the bench.

While in Cleveland, Helf participated in a stunt with third baseman Ken Keltner, a Milwaukee native and former Brewer himself, who tossed baseballs from the top of Cleveland's Terminal Tower 708 feet down into the gloves of the Tribe's two backstops on the street below (Terminal Tower was then the sixth-tallest building in the world, and the tallest outside of New York City).

Despite his performance on that day, Cleveland sent Helf back to the minors, where he kicked around for the next few years, aside from one more game with the big club in 1940.

In 1943, Brewer president Bill Veeck brought Helf back to the Orchard in a trade for catcher Charley George and pitcher Pete Naktenis. Veeck was looking for someone who could help develop the Brewers' pitching staff, and George was considered too much of a bully. A chronic sore shoulder, hampering George's throwing, probably didn't help, either.

Helf had no such problem; his pickoff move to second was among the best in the Association. Helf quickly became one of the best backstops "in this or any other league", according to the Milwaukee Journal. He was noticed by the majors, and the St. Louis Browns picked him up from the Brewers for $7,500 following the 1943 season.

Three months later, on February 2, 1944 Helf enlisted in the Navy (we can only speculate if he was in any way a comment on the state of the lowly Browns). Four months after that, he stopped off in Milwaukee to visit his old club and catch a twin-bill at the Orchard. He was introduced to the cheering Borchert Field crowd during the fifth inning of the first game, a Brewer win over the Kansas City Blues, leading the Journal photographer to snap the picture at top.

The Original Costumed Mascot, 1942

Today, the Brewers' Famous Racing Sausages celebrate their 20th Anniversary.

On Thursday, June 27, 1993, the sausages graduated from an animated cartoon on County Stadium's old black-and-white scoreboards to a live costumed event. Back in those days, there were only three sausages; Italian, Polish and Bratwurst, who won that inaugural race. They were later joined by the Hot Dog and Chorizo.

Milwaukee baseball was chock-a-block with costumed mascots that year; a costumed Bernie Brewer had just started cheering on the Brew Crew from his new Chalet installed high above the bleachers.

But Bernie wasn't the first, either.


That's skipper Charlie Grimm with a six-foot version of Owgust, the original Barrelman, way back in 1942.

I'd love to see him make a return to the ballpark, perhaps as a new incarnation of Bernie Brewer (the current mustachioed one has been that interesting to me). Can you imagine him going down the slide? Mascot logos are the best.

Majestic 1948 Throwback Jersey Review

Following up on yesterday's review of the Brewers' 1948 throwback caps, today we're going to look at Majestic's contribution to the Turn Back the Clock event, the throwback jerseys. Specifically, a retail version customized with the number of catcher Jonathan Lucroy.

The jersey features the elegant "Brewers" script wordmark introduced in 1942 set against a cream-colored polyester. This appears to be the preferred way to replicate a sense of flannel in most cases; the Brewers' 1913 throwback uniforms used exactly the same base color.

The initial Photoshop mockups on MLB's online store were not entirely accurate. They showed, and continue to show, simple red piping on the placket and cuffs. Fortunately, the actual retail jerseys include the blue/red/blue piping of the originals, reflecting the team's association with the Boston Braves.

On the back, no name. Just simple block numbers in red trimmed with navy.

It's a beautiful design, classic baseball. But how authentic is it to the original jerseys our Brews wore in 1948?

When we compare this jersey to the vintage 1948 Walt Linden jersey, we can see exactly how well they did.

The first thing that jumps out is the zipper. A staple of the original club's jerseys (every jersey they ever wore with "Brewers" on the chest had one), it's been replaced here with Majestic's standard six-button front. The button-placket also means that the piping is slightly wider than on the original.

Majestic also decided to use set-in sleeves rather than the original's raglan. Strange, since the Brewers use raglan sleeves on all their modern jerseys.

But that's where the nitpicking ends. Other than that, it's a remarkably faithful reproduction of the original, down to the number style.

Curious that they didn't include the ever-present batterman logo found on the back collars of all modern jerseys, especially since New Era put it on the backs of the caps.

I just can't get enough of that wordmark. Amazing.

Kudos to Majestic for a job very, very well done.

These are still available on MLB.com - get 'em while they're hot.

One final note on this 1948 Turn Back the Clock event; I'm still somewhat surprised that the Twins had almost no "St. Paul Saints" throwback merchandise available online. The visiting Brewers were much more well-represented. I'd like to believe that indicates a sense that Milwaukee fans are interested in their city's baseball history, but it's puzzling nonetheless.