The Milwaukee Bears Were the City’s Lone Entry into the Negro Leagues

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Photo courtesy of Picryl

Milwaukee Brewers - Milwaukee Bears Uniform

The Milwaukee Brewers adopt the Milwaukee Bears' uniforms each season

For one season, Milwaukee hosted a team in baseball’s Negro Leagues, the Major Leagues of Black professional baseball during the game’s era of segregation. In 1923, the Milwaukee Bears played at Athletic Park, the home of the minor league Brewers that was renamed Borchert Field in 1927.

The Bears struggled during their brief stay in Milwaukee. Franchises came and went frequently in the Negro National League (NNL), the first major professional black baseball league. Teams in Milwaukee and Toledo joined the circuit in 1923 to replace teams from Cleveland and Pittsburgh that dropped out of the league after the 1922 season. A number of players on the Milwaukee Bears roster came from the disbanded Pittsburgh Keystones team.

To put it mildly, the cobbled-together Milwaukee team wasn’t very good. Contemporary accounts and historical reconstructions of the team’s often changing schedule list the team with a 12-41, 14-52, or 14-32 final record. Typically, Black professional baseball teams rented their fields from white professional teams and were at the mercy of the weather and the needs of the venue’s primary tenant when it came to scheduling or rescheduling games. Each team in the NNL played a different number of games in the 1923 season. Additionally, NNL teams made extra money by playing games against white professional and sandlot teams. The Bears, for example, played a series of games against Kellogg’s company team in Battle Creek, Michigan. Whether or not those games should be counted as a part of the team’s record remains a matter of dispute.

Last Place Finish

By any account, the Bears finished in last place, more than 30 games behind the first place Kansas City Monarchs, a perennial power in the NNL.

The team received virtually no coverage in either the Milwaukee Journal or Sentinel. The most widely read Black newspaper in Milwaukee at the time was the Chicago Defender, which covered the Bears intermittently during the 1923 season. The Defender was one of the country’s leading Black newspapers and was, in essence, the national paper of record for African American readers.

Ken Bartelt, who wrote a fantastic master’s thesis at UW-Milwaukee about black baseball in the city, has found just nine instances of the team playing home games. It is unknown how well the Bears drew fans to their games, but it is unlikely that the crowds were substantial, otherwise the league would have had a significant interest in keeping a club in Milwaukee.

Hall of Fame

NNL president Rube Foster made aging Black baseball superstar Pete Hill the team’s manager. In 2006, Hill was inducted into the Baseball of Hall Fame and is widely regarded as one of the best African American baseball players of the early 20th century. On his plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, Hill is described as “the catalyst and captain of the great Chicago American Giants clubs of the 1910s. Left-handed line drive hitter with exceptional bat control.”

Dave Wyatt, a prominent Black sportswriter in Milwaukee, served as the team’s executive. On the whole, the Black newspapers which did cover Bears games spoke of them charitably.

The team didn’t have a major power hitter. Based on presently compiled statistics, third basemen Felton Stratton led the team with four homeruns. First baseman Percy Wilson and outfielder Sandy Thompson were the only Bears with batting averages better than .300, the traditional mark of excellence in the game. Twenty-year old pitcher Joe Strong was apparently the team’s best pitcher, winning four games over the course of the season.

“The Milwaukee Club, although in last place, puts on a much better game than either scores or percentage standings shows,” according to the Chicago Defender on August 18, 1923.

Defensive Prowess

Several sportswriters expressed esteem for Bears first baseman Percy Wilson, noting his defensive prowess despite his apparently small stature. First basemen are typically large, which enables them to reach for balls thrown in all directions toward them.

The Battle Creek Moon-Journal expressed particular enthusiasm for Wilson’s play at first base, despite the infielder’s diminutive frame. “Wilson, the ‘Pee-Wee’ first sacker, played the same brand of ball as he has displayed on his previous appearances here. He let his shortness bother him none and grabbed everything that came his way, high or low,” an unnamed Moon-Journal reporter intoned on June 1, 1923.

The St. Louis Argus noted Wilson’s stature as well when complimenting him for his play at first base: “Wilson made a leap for a throw that was truly sensational.” Additionally, the St. Louis paper noted the Bears’ team speed and acumen for bunting during a 5-2 loss to the St. Louis Stars.

On Monday September 3, 1923, the Milwaukee Bears won the last game they ever played. They traveled to Ohio to play the Dayton Marcos, an independent black professional baseball team that had previously played in the NNL (1920) and would once again appear briefly in the NNL (1926). The Chicago Defender gave the Bears little credit for the win. They presented the game as primarily a loss by the Marcos, who committed seven errors in the contest.

Team executive Dave Wyatt’s last known official act with the Bears was attending the NNL’s end of the season banquet in Kansas City in early October. The team disbanded soon thereafter.

For many years, the Bears were little remembered and records of their time in Milwaukee remain sparse. Nevertheless, the Brewers have made a conscious effort to honor the Bears’ legacy over the last twenty years. Beginning in 2006, the Milwaukee Brewers started honoring the Bears regularly, donning replica versions of the Bears’ uniforms for at least one event each season.