The Story of the Milwaukee Brewers


Book Description

Examines the history, players, and future of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team.




The Milwaukee Brewers at 50


Book Description

This official commemorative book tells the stories behind all the iconic moments, the legendary players and coaches, and so much more. Featuring hundreds of stunning photographs and insightful writing from team reporter Adam McCalvy, this is a deluxe, essential celebration of Brewers baseball, from the field to the clubhouse and beyond.




Building the Brewers


Book Description

 When the Milwaukee Braves moved to Atlanta after the 1965 season, many impassioned fans grew indifferent to baseball. Others--namely car dealer Bud Selig--decided to fight for the beloved sport. Selig formed an ownership group with the goal of winning a new franchise. They faced formidable opposition--American League President Joe Cronin, lawyer turned baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, and other AL team owners would not entertain the notion of another team for the city. This first ever history of baseball's return to Milwaukee covers the owners, teams and ballparks behind the rise and fall of their Braves, the five-year struggle to acquire a new team, the relocation of a major league club a week prior to the 1970 season and how the Brewers created an identity and built a fan base and a contending team.




100 Things Brewers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die


Book Description

Most Brewers fans have enjoyed a beer and a brat at Miller Park, proudly sported a hat with the iconic ball-in-glove logo, and listened to Bob Uecker call a game. Names like Pete Yuckovich and Gorman Thomas are just as familiar as Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. But even the most die-hard fans don't know everything about their beloved Brewers. In 100 Things Brewers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, Tom Haudricourt has assembled the facts, traditions, and achievements sure to educate and entertain true fans. Do you know which player regularly stopped by tailgates before games? Which pitcher worked as a garbageman before joining the Brewers? And why was Uecker's first scouting report covered in mashed potatoes and gravy? All of the key figures and events are here: Bud Selig's purchase of the Seattle Pilots in 1970; Harvey's Wallbangers of the early 1980s; the 2011 NL Central title, and even the team's recent development under manager Craig Counsell.




Bushville Wins!


Book Description

The rip-roaring story of baseball's most unlikely champions, featuring interviews with Henry Aaron, Bob Uecker and other members of the Milwaukee Braves, Bushville Wins! takes you to a time and place baseball and the Heartland will never forget. "Bushville hits the sweet spot of my childhood, the year my family moved to Wisconsin and the Braves won the World Series against the Yankees, a team my Brooklyn-raised dad taught us to hate. Thanks to John Klima for bringing it all back to life with such vivid detail and energetic writing." -- David Maraniss, New York Times bestselling author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered In the early 1950s, the New York Yankees were the biggest bullies on the block. They were invincible: they led the New York City baseball dynasty, which for eight consecutive years held an iron grip on the World Series championship. Then the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953, becoming surprise revolutionaries. Led by visionary owner Lou Perini, the Braves formed a powerful relationship with the Miller Brewing Company and foreshadowed the Dodgers and Giants moving west, sparking continental expansion and the ballpark boom. But the rest of the country wasn't sold. Why would a major league team move to a minor league town? In big cities like New York, Milwaukee was thought to be a podunk train station stop-off where the fans were always drunk and wouldn't know a baseball from a beer. They called Milwaukee Bushville. The Braves were no bushers! Eddie Mathews was a handsome home run hitter with a rugged edge. Warren Spahn was the craftiest pitcher in the business. Lew Burdette was a sharky spitball artist. Taken together, the Braves reveled in the High Life and made Milwaukee famous, while Wisconsin fans showed the rest of the country how to crack a cold one and throw a tailgate party. And in 1954, a solemn and skinny slugger came from Mobile to Milwaukee. Henry Aaron began his march to history. With a cast of screwballs, sluggers and beer swiggers, the Braves proved the guys at the corner bar could do the impossible - topple Casey Stengel's New York baseball dynasty in a World Series for the ages.




Ball Four


Book Description

The 50th Anniversary edition of “the book that changed baseball” (NPR), chosen by Time magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Non-Fiction” books. When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four. Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people—often wildly funny people. David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper’s that said of Bouton: “He has written . . . a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.” Today Ball Four has taken on another role—as a time capsule of life in the sixties. “It is not just a diary of Bouton’s 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros,” says sportswriter Jim Caple. “It’s a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a ‘tell all book’ is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California.” Includes a new foreword by Jim Bouton's wife, Paula Kurman “An irreverent, best-selling book that angered baseball’s hierarchy and changed the way journalists and fans viewed the sports world.” —The Washington Post




The Chicken Runs at Midnight


Book Description

Discover the nearly unbelievable true story of how a goofy catchphrase spoken by a coach's dying daughter inspired the 1992 Pittsburgh Pirates in game seven of the National League Championship Series and later became a sign from heaven to a grieving family at the end of game seven of the 1997 World Series. As a Major League Baseball coach, Rich Donnelly was dedicated, hardworking, and successful. But as a husband and father, he was distant, absent, and a failure. He'd let baseball take over his life, and as a result, his family suffered--that is, until the day he received some harrowing news. "Dad, I have a brain tumor, and I'm sorry." These words from his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amy, turned his world upside down. Now, more than ever, he was determined to put his family first. The time they spent together in the months before Amy's death were moments that Rich and his family will treasure forever, but they'll especially remember the inside joke that became a catchphrase for not only the Donnelly family but also the Pittsburgh Pirates as they played in the National League Championship Series that year: "The chicken runs at midnight." This book shares the heartwarming story behind the odd catchphrase--and how it still lives on as a symbol for never giving up--and proves that God can work in any person's life, even despite their mistakes and failures. As you learn more about Amy's incredible story, you'll discover: The life-changing power of forgiveness How to find peace and joy in the midst of loss The gift of God's grace Weaving baseball history with personal memoir, this book is one that will make you thrill to victory, believe in hope, and stand up to cheer for what is good in people's lives. It reminds us that God can work in our lives even when we think it's too late to change--and sometimes he sends us signs from heaven, if we only have eyes to see. Praise for The Chicken Runs at Midnight: "The Chicken Runs at Midnight is a beautiful story of baseball, family, and faith. Tom Friend does a wonderful job of weaving these three themes together and telling you a story that will give you the chills. You will cry; you will laugh; and you will tell the story over and over again--just as I have." --Craig Counsell, manager of the Milwaukee Brewers "The Chicken Runs at Midnight is the kind of heartwarming story all of us need, not just baseball fans. In our loud, busy world, it's a poignant reminder of what is truly important." --Tom Verducci, bestselling author of The Yankee Years and The Cubs Way




For the Good of the Game


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller Foreword by Doris Kearns Goodwin The longtime Commissioner of Major League Baseball provides an unprecedented look inside professional baseball today, focusing on how he helped bring the game into the modern age and revealing his interactions with players, managers, fellow owners, and fans nationwide. More than a century old, the game of baseball is resistant to change—owners, managers, players, and fans all hate it. Yet, now more than ever, baseball needs to evolve—to compete with other professional sports, stay relevant, and remain America’s Pastime it must adapt. Perhaps no one knows this better than Bud Selig who, as the head of MLB for more than twenty years, ushered in some of the most important, and controversial, changes in the game’s history—modernizing a sport that had remained unchanged since the 1960s. In this enlightening and surprising book, Selig goes inside the most difficult decisions and moments of his career, looking at how he worked to balance baseball’s storied history with the pressures of the twenty-first century to ensure its future. Part baseball story, part business saga, and part memoir, For the Good of the Game chronicles Selig’s career, takes fans inside locker rooms and board rooms, and offers an intimate, fascinating account of the frequently messy process involved in transforming an American institution. Featuring an all-star lineup of the biggest names from the last forty years of baseball, Selig recalls the vital games, private moments, and tense conversations he’s shared with Hall of Fame players and managers and the contentious calls he’s made. He also speaks candidly about hot-button issues the steroid scandal that threatened to destroy the game, telling his side of the story in full and for the first time. As he looks back and forward, Selig outlines the stakes for baseball’s continued transformation—and why the changes he helped usher in must only be the beginning. Illustrated with sixteen pages of photographs.




Building Milwaukee City Hall


Book Description

Milwaukee's City Hall on East Wells and North Water streets is a landmark. Not only officially, but as part of Milwaukee's identity, from the city's flag to the Laverne and Shirley sit-com in the 1970s. The site for this familiar building was not easily chosen. The final location was not the first choice for most of Milwaukee's movers and shakers, and after it was finally settled upon, the difficulties only became bigger. Battles over designs and the bidding process became politically heated and personal in nature. Cost overruns in the construction, although common at the time, grew to gigantic proportions. The completed building was, however, structurally sound and pleasing to the eye. Still standing 115 years later, it is a monument to the Milwaukee government officials, architect and builder.




Cobra


Book Description

Finalist for the 2021 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year "For that period of time, he was the greatest player of my generation."--Keith Hernandez Dave Parker was one of the biggest and most badass baseball players of the late twentieth century. He stood at six foot five and weighed 235 pounds. He was a seven-time All-Star, a two-time batting champion, a frequent Gold Glove winner, the 1978 National League MVP, and a World Series champion with both the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Oakland A's. Here the great Dave Parker delivers his wild and long-awaited autobiography--an authoritative account of Black baseball during its heyday as seen through the eyes of none other than the Cobra. From his earliest professional days learning the game from such baseball legends as Pie Traynor and Roberto Clemente to his later years mentoring younger talents like Eric Davis and Barry Larkin, Cobra is the story of a Black athlete making his way through the game during a time of major social and cultural transformation. From the racially integrated playing fields of his high school days to the cookie-cutter cathedrals of his prime alongside all the midseason and late-night theatrics that accompany an athlete's life on the road-Parker offers readers a glimpse of all that and everything in between. Everything. Parker recounts the triumphant victories and the heart-breaking defeats, both on and off the field. He shares the lessons and experiences of reaching the absolute pinnacle of professional athletics, the celebrations with his sports siblings who also got a taste of the thrills, as well as his beloved baseball brothers whom the game left behind. Parker recalls the complicated politics of spring training, recounts the early stages of the free agency era, revisits the notorious 1985 drug trials, and pays tribute to the enduring power of relationships between players at the deepest and highest levels of the sport. With comments at the start of each chapter by other baseball legends such as Pete Rose, Dave Winfield, Willie Randolph, and many more, Parker tells an epic tale of friendship, success, indulgence, and redemption, but most of all, family. Cobra is the unforgettable story of a million-dollar athlete just before baseball became a billion-dollar game.