Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee

In this enthusiastic history, Steele, a history professor at Concordia University Wisconsin, recounts the decade when the Braves franchise was based in Milwaukee. In 1953, the poorly performing Boston Braves relocated to Milwaukee with great expectations. Even before the Braves moved to the city, Milwaukee was a well-known baseball town with the AA Milwaukee Brewers, whose owner, William Veeck, Jr., sold the team to Louis R. Perini, one of the owners of the Boston Braves. As the Boston team floundered, losing attendance to the Red Sox, Perini and the other owners decided to move the Braves to Milwaukee with the promise of a new stadium. Steele chronicles the early successes of the team: they started to win, they invested in better players, and attendance at County Stadium soared. The Braves won 92 games in the 1953 season “and put 1,826,297 fans into the seats.” The Braves’ World Series victory over the Yankees in 1957 was the pinnacle of the team’s success. In the following years, attendance began to diminish, and Perini sold the team in 1962; the new owners looked to bigger markets, with Atlanta and its new Fulton County Stadium emerging as the top contender in 1965. Steele’s detailed history of the Braves captures the fervor of fans in an era when major league baseball gained larger national audiences. (Mar.)