Patrick Steele and I sat near each other at the final baseball game played at Milwaukee County Stadium on Sept. 28, 2000, and didn’t know it. That night, former Milwaukee Braves Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Frank Torre and Bob Buhl participated in a memorable closing ceremony that concluded with the old ballpark — which opened in 1953 to welcome the relocated Braves from Boston — wrapped in near-total darkness and fans in a collective group hug.
The experience gave me goosebumps, but it threw Steele a fastball of inspiration.
“I grew up in West Bend, and my mom was from New Berlin,” says the 50-year-old associate professor of history at Concordia University Wisconsin, born shortly after the Braves bolted for Atlanta in 1966. “When I would talk about the Braves as a kid, my mom would get very melancholy. She never understood why the Braves left Milwaukee.”
After years of thinking about writing a book that explains those reasons, he finally did. Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee was published in March by the University of Wisconsin Press and is dedicated to Steele’s mother, Kathye.
“If you’re looking for stories about Eddie Matthews and Warren Spahn, I recommend The Milwaukee Braves: A Baseball Eulogy, by Bob Buegge,” Steele says. “Those players are in my book, but only in passing. My focus is more on the economics of baseball and why the Braves failed in Milwaukee.”
Home of the Braves is a highly readable deep dive into the changing business of baseball in the 1960s and the contentious relationship between the team’s owners and the government officials who controlled Milwaukee County Stadium at the time. It even explores the role Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers played in the Braves’ departure.
Steele will be in Madison on July 10, 12:15 p.m., at the Wisconsin Historical Museum to discuss the business of Braves baseball and sign copies of his book.
At some point, he plans to write a sequel focusing on the years between the Braves’ departure and the Brewers’ arrival in 1970. He also claims the Braves’ legacy of a World Series and two National League pennants while in Milwaukee lives on. When Atlanta plays at Miller Park, Steele’s not the only fan decked out in a Braves jersey and a Brewers cap.
“You see people at Miller Park wearing Milwaukee Braves apparel all the time,” he says, adding that the Braves struggled in Atlanta until the early 1990s, losing 106 games in 1988. “Maybe it was better that the team’s story in Milwaukee ended when it did.”
