Photo Via Wikimedia Commons
White Sox ace Wilbur Wood
White Sox ace Wilbur Wood shone during his appearances at Milwaukee County Stadium in 1968 and 1969
During the summers of 1968 and 1969, the Chicago White Sox played a total of 20 “home” dates at Milwaukee County Stadium. This marriage of convenience served two ends. At the time, the White Sox of Major League Baseball’s American League (AL) struggled to draw fans to ancient Comiskey Park, which opened in 1910. White Sox owner Arthur Allyn had an apparent wandering eye and was considering greener pastures. At the same time, a cadre of well-heeled baseball enthusiasts in Milwaukee wanted to prove to Major League Baseball that their city would welcome back a big-league team.
The story starts with the departure of the beloved Milwaukee Braves baseball team after the 1965 season. The Braves relocated to Milwaukee from Boston in 1953 and became the immediate toast of town. Milwaukee had long been a great minor league baseball town—home to the beloved Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association for a half century. The denizens of southeastern Wisconsin proved even more hospitable to the big-league Braves.
The team broke a National League attendance record in their first season, drawing 1,826,397 fans to brand new County Stadium. The Braves continued to shatter NL attendance marks, drawing better than 2 million fans per year from 1954 until 1957. It didn’t hurt that the Braves team that arrived in Milwaukee was on the verge of greatness. A roster built around a trio of future Hall of Famers—pitcher Warren Spahn, third baseman Eddie Mathews, and outfielder Hank Aaron, baseball’s future “home run king”—turned Milwaukee into immediate contenders for a pennant and a world championship.
Braves mania peaked in 1957 and 1958 as the team defeated the New York Yankees in the 1957 World Series and reached the 1958 World Series, losing in seven games to those same Yankees.
After the Championship
As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, the Braves attendance started to drop. The team’s performance fell off slightly and a new out-of-town ownership group known as the “Rover Boys” started looking beyond Wisconsin in search of a new home. The lure of a brand-new tailor-made stadium in Atlanta and a wide-open southeastern television market persuaded the Braves ownership to move the franchise to Georgia. But not before a protracted legal battle that included a lame duck 1965 season where the soon-to-be Atlanta Braves played out the string in Milwaukee before tiny, often hostile crowds at Milwaukee County Stadium.
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Amid the battle over the Braves, local car dealer and baseball enthusiast Allan H. “Bud” Selig put together a group of investors interested in making Milwaukee a Major League city once again.
The group was known as the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc., an homage to the city’s longstanding minor league team. In addition to a well-heeled membership that included several local business executives, Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc. was pitching an already proven commodity—big league baseball in Milwaukee. The Braves had been a box office smash for years. Moreover, Milwaukee County Stadium was still a fairly new venue, having opened in 1953, making it newer than the majority of big-league stadiums in 1967.
Exhibition Game
To get Milwaukee’s feet wet, Selig scheduled a Chicago White Sox exhibition game at County Stadium. Brewers, Inc’s push for bringing baseball back to Milwaukee opened with a bang,Top of Form On July 24, 1967, a standing room only crowd of more than 50,000 came out to County Stadium for an exhibition game between the White Sox and Twins. Selig’s group believed the strong showing would convince either the American or National League to include Milwaukee in its upcoming expansion plans. It wasn’t to be. The NL would add clubs in San Diego and Montreal while the American League placed clubs in Kansas City and Seattle, all beginning in 1969.
That didn’t mean that the White Sox weren’t interested in Milwaukee.
The eye-popping exhibition game crowd convinced White Sox owner Arthur Allyn to schedule a series of home dates at Milwaukee County Stadium for the next season. Despite a winning 1967 campaign, the White Sox drew fewer than a million fans to Comiskey. The White Sox finished seventh out of ten teams in the AL in attendance despite competing for a pennant until the season’s final weekend. That same season, the Cubs surpassed the White Sox in attendance for the first time since 1950, leading to concerns among the Pale Hose brass that the team had lost its preeminence in the city. Allyn was open to the idea of finding a new home for his club and moving to Milwaukee would be the path of least resistance.
On the field, the White Sox were led by a familiar face in Milwaukee. Their manager, Eddie Stanky, had been a star for the minor league Brewers back in the ‘40’s. Stanky had won the American Association batting title in 1942 and remained a beloved figure in Wisconsin.
Box Office Bonanza
After an October 1967 meeting that included Allyn, Stanky, and Selig, the White Sox agreed to play nine games in Milwaukee during the 1968 season—one game against each of the other AL teams. These games proved to be a box office bonanza for the White Sox and proof of Milwaukee’s willingness to support Major League Baseball.
In nine Milwaukee dates, the White Sox drew 264,478 fans—an average of more than 29,000 per contest. The White Sox drew just 539,478 fans to Comiskey in their other 72 home dates. Nearly one-third of home fans who saw the White Sox in 1968 saw them in Milwaukee.
Many of these Milwaukee contests had the feel of Old Home Week. Several busloads of fans from northern Wisconsin turned out to see Stevens Point native Rick Reichardt play for the California Angels on May 15, 1968.
On June 17, 1968, several dozen former Milwaukee Brewers minor leaguers were recognized before a game with the Cleveland Indians.
The nostalgia peaked on August 26, 1968, when the Detroit Tigers visited Milwaukee County Stadium. At the time, Detroit’s roster included the most beloved of all Milwaukee Braves—third baseman and future Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews. Mathews, his wife, and three children, who still resided in Brookfield, were honored before the game. Mathews received several-minute long standing ovations every time he came to the plate. A crowd of 42,808 turned out for the Tigers game and Mathews’ tribute, the largest draw of the season.
Despite the enthusiastic support, the White Sox played atrociously in their 1968 Milwaukee contests. The club went 1-8 in their Milwaukee games, which took place between Mid-May and late August. On four occasions, the opposition shut out the home “Pale Hose.”
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This was bad even by the standard of the ’68 White Sox, who went 67-95 that summer.
In late October 1968, the White Sox announced that they would return to County Stadium for 11 regular season games in 1969. The White Sox would face every one of the now 11 AL teams in Milwaukee that season, including the expansion Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots.
Dropping Attendance
The White Sox played much better in Milwaukee in 1969, winning 7 of 11 games. Attendance wasn’t quite as strong.
Perhaps the novelty wore off some in year two.
The 1969 Milwaukee White Sox averaged roughly 18,000 spectators per game, well off of their 1968 mark. On two occasions, the White Sox drew fewer than 10,000 fans to County Stadium—the first game, an April 23 contest against California, and the last game, a September 26 game against expansion Kansas City.
Still, 18,000 was much better than what the White Sox drew at home in the summer of ’69. The White Sox averaged fewer than 7,000 spectators per game at Comiskey Park.
After the season, Selig and Brewers, Inc. pushed Allyn to sell the White Sox but the American League balked at the idea, wanting to maintain a presence in Chicago.
Fortunately, another opportunity to bring the big leagues back to Milwaukee soon materialized. The expansion Seattle Pilots struggled financially during their first season in the Pacific Northwest, 1969.
The Pilots filed for bankruptcy in March 1970. Selig and Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc. took advantage of the opportunity and purchased the team for $10.5 million after a buyer in Washington state could not be found. Rather than heading back to Seattle, the Pilots would be rechristened the Brewers and relocated to Wisconsin.
On April 7, 1970, the major league Milwaukee Brewers debuted at County Stadium against the California Angels. The Brewers wore Pilots uniforms with the original letters removed and replaced with “B-R-E-W-E-R-S” across the front. 37,237 ecstatic baseball fans showed up for the big-league Brewers’ debut—more than three times as many fans as showed up to White Sox Opening Day at Comiskey.
Less than 10 months earlier, Milwaukee fans had been cheering against largely the same roster of players when they came to town as the Seattle Pilots. Less than four years earlier, Milwaukee faced its first spring in nearly 15 years without Major League Baseball. Now, through the efforts of local boosters and an agreement with the Southside Sox, big league baseball returned permanently to Milwaukee.
