Book on baseball's Braves jilting Milwaukee adds new villains to the lineup

Milwaukee fell in love with the Braves, and then got dumped — by guys from Chicago, yet. 

For a half-century, that's been the dominant local narrative surrounding the rise, stumble and departure of Milwaukee's first modern-day major-league baseball team. 

When the Braves left Milwaukee for Atlanta in 1966 after 13 seasons, it added a giant chip to Milwaukee's shoulder, one the city has never really shrugged off. 

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Making it worse was that the team's departure was seen as an "outside" job, perpetrated by out-of-town owners more interested in money than fan loyalty.

Patrick W. Steele, an associate professor of history at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon, grew up hearing stories about the Braves' glory days and decided to dig a little deeper. 

Unlike other books about the Milwaukee Braves, Steele's "Home of the Braves" focuses more on what happened off the field than on it. 

And what happened off the field, he shows in this trim but well-sourced history, was a hot mess. Aggressive new ownership and stubborn local government battled and bickered at a time when both the Braves and baseball were heading into dangerous slumps. 

The romance between Milwaukee and the Braves started off strong. 

The first city to build a major-league stadium without having a major-league team to put in it, Milwaukee managed to persuade Lou Perini, the owner of the struggling Boston Braves, to move his team to brand-new County Stadium in 1953.

It was a risky move — no major-league baseball team had relocated since 1904 — but it paid off immediately for both sides.

Milwaukee fell in love with being "major league." The Braves led the National League in attendance the first six years the team played in Milwaukee, and local companies bent over backward to support baseball and the Braves. 

OUR BACK PAGES:That time Miller Brewing picked up the tab for the stadium's scoreboard

It didn't hurt that, on the field, the Braves were a powerhouse. From 1953 to '60, the Braves finished first, second or third every year. In 1957 and '58, the team won the N.L. pennant, and tied for first in 1959, losing a two-game playoff to the Dodgers. 

But by 1961, things were changing — both in Milwaukee and in baseball. 

After drawing nearly 2.2 million fans in 1957, when they won the World Series, the Braves saw their attendance dwindle. By 1960, when the Braves finished fourth, attendance had fallen by nearly a third, to below 1.5 million, with season-ticket sales down more than 20%. 

Baseball attendance was shrinking everywhere, but in Milwaukee, Steele notes, the drop coincided with other alarming trends. Chief among them were a suddenly shrinking market — thanks to the Washington Senators moving to Minnesota, where the new Twins siphoned off some fans and the Braves' broadcast audience — and the rise of the Green Bay Packers, who under Vince Lombardi supplanted the Braves as Wisconsin's team.   

According to Steele, what also made the Braves' situation in Milwaukee difficult was the increasingly combative stance of local government. 

For starters, the Braves paid more to use their publicly owned ballpark than any other big-league team, as Milwaukee County tried to get as much revenue from the team as possible. (For example, the team was responsible for upkeep of the parking lots, but Milwaukee County, which controlled the stadium, got all the parking revenue.) 

In 1960, the Parks Department accused the Braves of fudging attendance figures to pay lower rent. Before the 1961 season, the county barred fans from bringing their own beer into the ballpark, triggering an attendance boycott. The following season, the County Board challenged the Braves' plans to televise games and raise beer prices. 

Still, Steele says, the Chicago-based syndicate that bought the Braves from Perini in 1962 was dedicated to keeping the team in Milwaukee — at first. 

But the new owners also refused to agree to anything longer than a three-year lease at County Stadium, through 1965. Reports that the Braves were looking to move to Atlanta just made fans and local officials angry. 

During the 1964 season, County Board Chairman Eugene Grobschmidt even accused the Braves "of trying to make the team look bad" to make moving easier. Team officials got so angry they refused to meet with the county until Grobschmidt apologized. 

When the Braves' owners finally admitted they were looking at going to Atlanta in 1965, Milwaukee went to the mattresses, suing to make sure the team fulfilled its contract. The resulting court battle was bitter and personal and dragged into 1966, by which time the Braves had already played a full season in Atlanta.    

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The breakup with the Braves was something Milwaukee never really got over, which helps explain why those Chicago guys usually take the fall for the whole thing.

But as Steele shows in "Home of the Braves," the fault for losing the Braves also lies, to a degree, in ourselves.  

FIRST PITCH FOR 'HOME OF THE BRAVES' 

The University of Wisconsin Press holds a book launch party for "Home of the Braves" at 6:30 p.m. March 28 at Zimmerman Architectural Studios, 2122 W. Mount Vernon Ave. Tickets, at $5, benefit the Chudnow Museum of Yesteryear, and are available at the museum's website:chudnowmuseum.org.