Category: Markers

Remembering Milwaukee County Stadium

Growing up in greater Chicagoland, I had two baseball options. Despite pressure from my hardcore extended White Sox family, I became a Chicago Cubs fan. Perhaps my recessive genes kicked in.

Despite my local team affiliation, I attended games at both Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park. I remember when the Cubs played home games exclusively during the day, and when the White Sox played on the other side of 35th Street. As my baseball interests expanded beyond just my team, I became intrigued by ballparks. Each team had unique homes with rich histories. I established a goal to get out of my media market and visit every Major League Baseball park. Little did I know, the park closest to home is one I’d never visit.

During the early-1980s, my family spent substantial time visiting my paternal grandmother in Milwaukee. We enjoyed countless lunches at the nearby Ground Round. I threw peanut shells on the floor and accumulated more mini Brewers helmets than my Mom could stand. On our way home one day, my Dad took a different route. We looped around Milwaukee County Stadium, then the home of the Brewers, before one of the World Series games in 1982. My jaw dropped and my eyes widened. I had never seen so many cars in a parking lot. Even the Goodyear blimp hovered over the ballpark.

The Brewers continued playing their home games at County Stadium through the 2000 season before moving to Miller Park (renamed American Family Field in 2021). To the surprise of the 9-year-old in me, I never attended a game at County Stadium (I did see a Paul McCartney concert there in 1993).

Despite having a date with the wrecking ball, the Brewers guaranteed the memory of County Stadium would endure. Baseball fans can enjoy the home plate marker placed where Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews powered the Milwaukee Braves to a World Series championship in 1957, and Robin Yount and Paul Molitor won the American League pennant in 1982. Just a few feet away, there’s a memorial honoring the Braves brief Cream City tenure. Speaking of Hammerin’ Hank, fans will find an added treat in the parking lot with a marker commemorating where the final home run of Aaron’s career landed.

Going to a game? Make sure to visit the Brewers Team Store in the Left Field Corner at American Family Field. There is a wall entirely constructed with bricks from County Stadium.

Heading to Milwaukee soon? The new SABR Baseball Map will provide the precise location of these markers, the Walk of Fame and the Wall of Honor outside of American Family Field.

Exploring Cleveland Baseball

Ichiro Suzuki famously slandered Cleveland when having to return there to make up a snowed-out game, “To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to. If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”

Frankly, I was ambivalent about the city having visited twice before my youngest put a school there at the top of his college list. In the intervening trips for campus tours and moving him in and out of dorms, there has been some opportunity to explore the city, dine at some amazing restaurants, and better formulate my thoughts on what Cleveland has to offer.

“To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to. If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”

Ichiro Suzuki

Moreover, there is an awful lot of baseball history in the Cleveland area to experience. Most of my landmark hunting to date has been in the early morning hours while everyone else sleeps in, often by way of a roundabout bagel run. Spanning several trips I have lingered at League Park, admired the statues of Elmer Flick and Rocky Colavito erected in town parks, paid my respects at the (purported) grave of Ed Delahanty, and attended games played by the Guardians and Lake Erie Crushers of the Frontier League.

Our most recent visit was for parent’s weekend, a delightful departure from past visits free of the “is this the right place for him?” quandary or the stress of packing and moving and making sure we brought enough ramen. We enjoyed an afternoon of hiking at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, had an amazing dinner downtown, and toured the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) after a late breakfast the following morning.

But of course I had some time to see a few baseball things. I headed first to the marker at Brookside Stadium and found the park quite easily with turn-by-turn directions from the SABR Baseball Map on my phone. It was a bit of a walk down a paved path the marker, but it was worth it.

Built in a natural amphitheater, a baseball diamond still occupies the former site of Brookside Stadium, which was razed in the 1980s. According to the marker, Brookside hosted the largest crowd ever recorded for an amateur baseball game, some 115,000 people in 1915. What a contrast to the park I found, serene and lovely on a crisp fall morning.

Part of exploring baseball history is finding new landmarks, so I was thrilled to look over and see another marker detailing the history of Brookside Stadium that we did not yet have on our list. I learned that the ballpark was built in 1909 in an effort to have the 1912 Olympics awarded to Cleveland.

I then headed over to Highland Park Cemetery to pay my respects at the grave of Luke Easter, a fascinating player who seemingly came out of nowhere and met a tragic end. [Do not miss the chapter on Easter in Outsider Baseball by Scott Simkus.]

And perhaps most surprisingly, I happened upon some baseball-related art at the CMA. The oversized Standing Mitt and Ball by Claes Oldenburg was a fitting companion piece to his Batcolumn erected in Chicago, just blocks from my office.

I also happened upon this centuries-old headgear displayed in the armor gallery, which most certainly qualifies as the earliest known baseball helmet, right?

There are several more trips to Cleveland in my future and I cannot wait to continue exploring the area. That I might get to see some baseball-related sites along the way is just a bonus.

Ichiro was wrong.

Sources:

Larry Stone, “Ichiro unlike any player we’ve seen or will see again,” Longview (Washington) Daily News, March 23, 2019: B7.

Welcome to Marengo or: How I Accidentally Visited My First Ballplayer’s Grave

Several years ago I was in Rockford, Illinois for work so (of course) I planned a slight detour on the way home to check out the Carl Lundgren historical marker in Marengo. After a bit of detective work (the SABR Baseball Map did not exist yet!) I was able to locate the marker, placed on the west side of North East Street.

Carl Lundgren was a terrific twirler for the Chicago Cubs from 1902-09. During the three consecutive seasons in which the Cubs appeared in the World Series (1906-08), Lundgren posted a regular season record of 41-22, with an ERA of 2.33 and 13 shutouts. Yet he was the odd man out and tossed not a single World Series pitch in any of those three years.

After a pair of ineffective outings for Chicago in 1909, Lundgren bounced around the minors for a few seasons before retiring from the game as a player. He went on to an amazing career as manager for Princeton, the University of Michigan and (alma mater) University of Illinois baseball teams, piloting his Wolverine and Illini squads to eight total Big Ten championships.

As I took a moment to read the inscription and snap a couple of photographs on an overcast morning, a man approached on a bicycle and let me know the sign had been purposely placed near the field where Lundgren played ball as a child. Wonderfully, a youth-sized diamond still existed at the site.

Lundgren died suddenly of a heart attack at his childhood home in 1934 and, as the gentleman on the bike advised, was buried right across the street from where his baseball career began. The man rode off after directing me to Lundgren’s grave, certainly unaware he had just sent me down a path that would lead to innumerable future ballplayer gravesite visits. Somewhat reluctantly at the time, however, I drove slowly through the cemetery and found Lundgren’s marker, lovingly adorned with Cubs mementos. 

Unsure what to do, I silently paid my respects and snapped a quick photo. As I drove away, I was struck by the weighty realization that although Lundgren threw his final pitch for the Cubs in 1909, he was not forgotten. Although baseball is not the most important thing in the world, these individuals were the most important people in the world to the people who loved them.

That’s comforting.