County Stadium
Milwaukee, WI
Cincinnati Reds
at Milwaukee Brewers
August 16, 2000
By
Ken Schlapp
In 2003, when I took my big baseball
trip around North America to see every current stadium, there was
only one stadium that I had previously visited, which no longer
existed. That stadium was Milwaukee County Stadium in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, which I had seen a game on August 16, 2000. At that
time, I had no idea that I would be taking the big trip in 2003, and
certainly had no idea that I would be writing about it for
ballparksofbaseball.com. Therefore, I did not take notes at the
game, but I know I kept score and took photos, but with several
moves and changes in my life, I have not been able to locate either
the scorebook or the photos. I do still have my memories and many
online resources to fill in as many of the gaps as possible, so I
will give it my best shot to tell a story. I am calling this
Stadium #
 42,
even though my visit to Milwaukee really took place before Stadium #
1 in the Bronx. I am also tacking my travel distances to the end,
rather than the beginning, which should not matter, since I will end
up with the right total regardless.
Milwaukee County Stadium was the first
ballpark built with municipal funds. The City of Milwaukee had
originally built this stadium (beginning in 1951) for the Minor
League Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association. However, the
city also intended to entice a Major League franchise to relocate in
Milwaukee with their fancy new stadium. Therefore, the stadium was
built to facilitate Major League baseball in terms of size and
scope. Considering that the Boston Braves moved their franchise to
Milwaukee for the start of the 1953 season and the opening of the
stadium, they were quite successful with their intentions. In fact,
the Minor League Brewers never had the opportunity to make County
Stadium their official home
County Stadium had a very successful
beginning with the Braves. During the 1953 season, the Braves drew
1.8 million fans in attendance, which was a new National League
record. The Braves continued to lead the league in attendance until
1959, when the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. The
Braves also had success on the field. Hank Aaron began his Hall of
Fame career in Milwaukee in 1954 and led the Braves to two
consecutive World Series appearances in 1957 & 1958 including the
World Championship in 1957. However, during the early 1960s, the
Braves success, along with the attendance began to decline and the
Braves, under new ownership, packed up and moved to Atlanta for a
new start.
After the Braves left, a part owner of
the team, Bud Selig, who was also a Milwaukee businessman, pushed
hard to bring baseball back to Milwaukee and County Stadium. At the
time, the Chicago White Sox were not drawing well in nearby Chicago,
which led Selig to schedule 9 home games for the White Sox at County
Stadium in 1968 and 11 more in 1969. The amazing fact for those
games is that those 20 games represented about 12% of the White Sox
games those two years, but the attendance was so good, that the
attendance for the Milwaukee games represented approximately
one-third of their total attendance! Despite that success in
attendance, Milwauk ee
was not one of the four cities to house expansion franchises in
1969. Unfortunately, the choices for expansion were too far along
before these games were played and the cities that did bring in new
teams were San Diego and Montreal in the National League and Kansas
City and Seattle in the American League.
Much to Selig’s delight, the expansion
Seattle Pilots were a failure and fell into bankruptcy. In rather
abrupt fashion, Selig purchased the Pilots during spring training in
1970, and the Pilots were moved to Milwaukee and renamed the Brewers
for the start of the 1970 season, which was the name of County
Stadium’s originally intended tenant. The Brewers continued to play
their home games in County Stadium until its demolition after the
2000 season. At least this time, Milwaukee did not lose their Major
League franchise, the Brewers simply moved into their new stadium,
Miller Park, which was built beyond the outfield walls of County
Stadium. In addition to the Braves, White Sox, and Brewers, The
Green Bay Packers of the National Football League also played 2-3
home games a year at County Stadium from 1953 through 1994.
As for my visit to Milwaukee County
Stadium, I had to do some research to figure out exactly when I did
visit. What I did remember was that I drove to Milwaukee from
Chicago after auditing my company’s health practice for the first
time. I also knew that from Milwaukee, I drove to Minneapolis the
next morning to catch a weekday afternoon game at the Metrodome, and
to visit my sister Linda, who lived in Minneapolis at the time. My
first course of action was to contact Linda to find out when she
lived in Minneapolis. That part was easy and the answer was from
1998 to 2002. Then I searched backwards on my Outlook calendar at
work, but meetings and appointments only go back as far as October
2002, so that was a dead end. My next course of action was to
search through the Twins schedules on baseball-reference.com to find
all day home games played on Wednesdays or Thursdays between 1998
and 2002. Then I kicked myself for being dumb, because I knew I
visited County Stadium during its final season, so I narrowed my
search down to 2000. Once I isolated all Wednesday and Thursday
home day games for the Twins, I searched the Brewers home schedule
to find out if they had a home night game the day prior to any of
those Twins home day games. Luckily, for m e,
August 16, 2000 was the only such instance, and when I checked the
box score and saw that Jeff D’Amico was the winning pitcher for the
Brewers, more memories came back and I knew I had the right game.
Now that the game date is settled, I
can focus back to try to draw out my memories of my experience at
the game. As I stated above, I worked in my Chicago office for two
days, then rented a car and took the 90-minute drive up north to
Milwaukee for the Brewers game. When I got there, I checked into my
hotel, which was only 1-2 miles from County Stadium. I asked the
receptionist if it was close enough to walk and he said yes, so that
is what I did. Since this was the last season at County Stadium,
the Brewers new park was mostly completed, at least as far as the
structure is concerned. My path from the hotel to County Stadium
took me past Miller Park, which was exciting considering this was
the first time I had ever seen a stadium still under construction.
Although, I will say that the walk took me through a seemingly
deserted park and construction area, so I was not so sure that
walking back at night would be a good idea.
In general, I always like to sit
behind home plate, regardless of how high the seat is, so I bought a
ticket in the upper level between home plate and 3rd base
(at least as far as my memory tells me). I remember walking in
through the concourses that reminded me of Yankee Stadium II and
Wrigley Field as far as the limited space to walk to get food and
head to the rest rooms. However, the catwalks that led to the press
level are what really stood out to me. Maybe I am wrong, but they
did not look to sturdy and gave the stadium a much older feel to
me. I know that County Stadium was less than 50 years old in 2000,
but it felt like it was as old as Wrigley based on its state of
upkeep.
Aside from the Brewers, Milwaukee is
famous for brewing and for good sausages and bratwurst. This is not
a bad thing considering I am a bit of a beer geek. I will be the
first to tell you that Miller is not amongst my favorite beers, but
I was a less educated beer aficionado 12 years ago and I was happy
to have a beer at the game, but only one. I never have more than
one beer; because I would much rather watch the game the run for
another beer and take 17 trips to the rest room. I also made sure
I had a brat with sour kraut and secret stadium sauce, which was
great.
Once I had my beer and brat in hand, I
was set to sit down to watch the game. The first thing that stood
out to me from my seat was the view of the new stadium beyond the
outfield walls. The new stadium looked gigantic compared to County
Stadium, but it also looked like it would be much nicer. It was
clear from the condition of the seats, catwalks, and concourse
areas, that Milwaukee was due for a new ballpark. From my
perspective, it was fun to see both new and old standing side by
side.
The game started with Jeff D’Amico
retiring the Reds in order. It looked like the Reds pitcher, Rob
Bell would do the same when he retired the first two Brewers on
outfield flies, but then Geoff Jenkins touched him for a single in
front of cleanup hitter Richie Sexson. Sexson, did not disappoint
in his role as cleanup man and blasted a 2-run homer, which sent
Bernie Brewer sliding down from his beer-barrel chalet and into the
giant beer mug in left field…and also gave the Brewers a 2-0 lead.
It is hard to think of the Brewers without their mustachioed mascot
Bernie Brewer. Thankfully, the Brewers did hit a home run and did
it early so I could see the famous slide. Jeremy Burnitz followed
the homer with a double and moved to 3rd on a wild pitch,
but would eventually be stranded at 3rd.
D’Amico allowed two base runners in
each of the next 3 innings, but did not allow a run until the top of
the 5th. The Reds finally got on the scoreboard when
Dante Bichette drove home Ken Griffey with a 2-out RBI double to
trim the Brewers lead to 2-1. Then D’Amico proceeded to walk both
Sean Casey and Michael Tucker to load up the bases, but he would
again escape further harm by inducing Pokey Reese to ground out to 2nd
base. At this point, I had to get out of trouble as well, since
that one beer finally got to my bladder. I asked the people around
me to keep an eye on my backpack while I headed out to the rest
room. They looked at me strange, but said sure. When I was walking
back to my seat, the guy sitting behind me said he sure liked all
the things he took from that bag. I thought it was pretty funny
that they were goofing on my apprehension to leave my stuff behind.
I got a good laugh, but did not miss any of the game.
The Brewers threatened in the bottom
of the 5th, but did not score after leaving the bases
loaded. D’Amico s ettled
down in the top of the 6th, retiring the Reds in order
for the first time since the 1st inning. It was after
the top of the 6th though that the excitement started,
because that is when the sausage race takes place. The race is
between the giant Bratwurst, Polish Sausage, Italian Sausage, and
Hot Dog mascots. The four wieners start running by the 3rd
base line and head around the rim of the field towards 1st
base to the finish line. The crowd was more excited during this
race than any other point during the game. I have to admit that it
is both goofy and fun, only I do not remember which sausage was the
big wiener and which one was wurst!
Charlie Hayes then led off the Brewers
6th with a single of Scott Sullivan and came around to
score on an RBI single by Rafael Belliard to bump up their lead to
3-1. D’Amico faced the minimum batters again in the 7th,
although Griffey did single before being erased on a ground out
double play to 3rd by Bichette. This would be the last
inning for D’Amico, who worked 7 innings, giving up only 1 run on 8
hits, 1 walk, and 1 hit batter with 2 strikeouts. For the v7th
inning stretch, The Brewers added a unique twist by having their
fans sing along with Roll out the Barrel after the traditional Take
Me Out to the Ball Game. I like the way the fans got into it. Then
the Brewers would end up tacking on 2 more runs in the 8th
while 3 Brewer relievers would combine to close out the last 2
innings to give the Brew Crew a 5-1 victory.
After the game, I struggled to find a
taxi, but I eventually did. The cab driver was originally from
Africa (unfortunately I do not remember which country), but very
proud of his adopted new hometown. I had told him I was only in
Milwaukee for the game, and he was disappointed that I was not going
to experience one of the many festivals that Milwaukee hosts. He
said I should come back to try all the diverse ethnic foods and fun
that go along with the festivals. I was happy to talk to him for
those few moments to see someone as proud of where he is from as I
am of my hometown of New York City.
Thankfully, as I noted in my write-up
on Miller Park, The Brewers did not forget about County Stadium once
it was demolished. In its place now stands Helfaer Field, which is
a youth size Baseball stadium that is available to groups for a fee,
but open to all for Sunday afternoon games. When we got to the field
there were various people playing catch on the field and eating at
the picnic tables inside this miniature stadium. All around the
field, you will find plaques honoring Milwaukee Baseball history on
a decade-by-decade basis, and there are even large monuments outside
the front entrance commemorating Milwaukee's championship teams.
And, of course, they have not forgotten to have a commemorative home
plate at the spot where home plate at County Stadium actually
stood. The kids can even play out in Bernie Brewer's Dugout
Playground that is just beyond the outfield fences of Helfaer Field.
Bottom line – I am glad I was able to
get to a game at County Stadium before it was demolished. It was
clearly an older stadium that its time had come, but the charm of
Bernie the Brewer, the sausage race and the fans made this a fun
experience for me. Later on, the Brewers new Stadium, Miller Park,
would become one of my favorites.
Basic trip facts:
-Stadium - # 42
-Old Stadium Sites visited – None (Total – 40)
-Under construction Stadium Sites visited – Miller Park (Total – 4)
-Miles traveled – 190 via driving and 1,466 via Air (Totals: Driving
– 20,311, Subway - 132, Amtrak – 460, Air - 38,012, Total – 58,915)
-States, provinces, Districts and/or commonwealths passed through –
Illinois and Wisconsin (Totals: States – 48, Provinces – 2,
Districts – 1, Commonwealths - 1)
-Seats – Upper Level near home plate…I think
-Prices: Parking - ??, Beer - ??, Souvenir Soda - ??, Hot Dog - ??,
Scorecards/Program – ??
-Credit Card giveaway – Do not remember
-First Pitch - 7:10 PM
-Results: Brewers 5 – Reds 1, W – Jeff D’Amico, L – Rob Bell, S –
None
-Home team record to date – 30 wins, 23 losses
-Record of “team I was routing for” to date – 23 wins, 30 losses
-Attendance – 26,339
-Lodging – Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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