Wisconsin Historical Society
The UW baseball team plays Illinois at Breese Stevens Field in 1951. FYI: UW first baseman Ron Barbian is called out at third.
It’s been a quarter-century since the University of Wisconsin baseball team played a game. During that final 1991 season, the Badgers went 6-22. Athletic director Barry Alvarez once reportedly told a family of UW baseball supporters that the average home-game attendance was 31.
From a financial perspective, eliminating baseball and four other non-revenue-generating sports (men’s and women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s fencing) made sense in an era when UW Athletics was $2 million in debt and the Badgers football team had won a total of nine games in four years.
Now, with wildly successful football and men’s basketball programs, Jeff Block, coach of UW-Madison club baseball teams, is trying to do what so many people have asked for over the past 25 years: Bring back varsity baseball to UW.
“I’ve probably been asked 5,000-plus times why there isn’t baseball at UW,” Block told Madison.com a couple weeks ago after presenting a 14-page proposal that he says makes it financially feasible to restore the sport. “Why can so many [NCAA] Division III schools in the nation provide a team, but UW-Madison is one of the top revenue-producing athletic departments in the nation and they can’t somehow find a way to have the national pastime?”
Wisconsin has a long history dating back to the late 1800s of players making it to the pros. According to Baseball-Almanac.com, almost 240 players from this state have played in the Majors — including Madison East grad Mike Gosling, who had stints with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians during a five-year career from 2004 to 2009. And nearly 40 UW players were drafted by Major League teams between 1965 and 1991.
I’m willing to bet some of the current talent at successful high school programs in Sun Prairie, Middleton and Janesville Craig would want to bat for Bucky, too.
UW club baseball debuted in 2000, but it’s just not the same — especially considering every other Big Ten university, even ones with athletic programs and traditions woefully inferior to those at Wisconsin, field teams.
Block’s done the research and claims expenses for Big Ten programs average $1.4 million per year; it could be less for Wisconsin if Warner Park is used as the Badgers’ home field. Also worth noting: UW added three women’s sports since 1991.
Alvarez and his staff remain adamantly opposed to reinstating baseball, but Block’s proposal deserves to take a swing.
