A History of Badger Baseball: The Rise and Fall of America’s Pastime at the University of Wisconsin by Steven D. Schmitt (review)

It comes as a shock to most people that the University of Wisconsin is the only Big Ten conference member not to field a baseball team. This unfortunate state of affairs dates back to after the 1991 season when after 117 years of college play and 1445 victories, the plug was pulled on the Badger program by cost-conscious administrators concerned about low attendance and revenue and Title IX regulations demanding the addition of women’s sports. As someone who earned an MA and PhD at UW–Madison in the 1960s and who has since become a fervent follower of Badger basketball and football teams, I find the situation distressing.

So does veteran Wisconsin general reporter and sportswriter Steven D. Schmitt. Happily, instead of whining, he has done what a good historian must do—dig into the past to recreate the neglected years of Badger baseball history. In so doing, he has produced a book that is a meticulous chronological chronicle of a sport that has always been a stepchild in the athletic department and yet has produced many winning seasons, a 1950 College World Series participant, and developed many major leaguers, especially after World War Two. Informed readers will recognize many of the names. Among them are catcher John “Red” Wilson who also was a Badger football center; shortstop Harvey Kuenn (later an outfielder, batting champion, and Milwaukee Brewers World Series manager); bonus baby outfielder John DeMerit rushed to the majors to play a small part in the Milwaukee Braves 1957 World Series-winning season; southpaw Jim O’Toole, and outfielder Rick Reichardt, a great football running back whose 1964 $205,000 baseball bonus precipitated the passage of the free agent amateur draft in 1965.

Schmitt has dug deep into Reichardt’s story, citing a remarkable four-part NBC national television series, Odyssey of a Bonus Baby—The Courting of Rick Reichardt, reported by future Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Wolff. (In a rare error in the book, Schmitt misspells Wolff ’s name as Wolf.) “Cameras recorded Reichardt’s every move” (122), Schmitt writes—from the superstar’s home town of Stevens Point, Wisconsin to the Sunset Strip and Malibu in southern California where he eventually signs with owner Gene Autry’s California Angels. At a party for Stanley Kramer’s movie Ship of Fools, actor Lee Marvin advises young Reichardt to get all the money he can from the owner. (A serious kidney injury kept Reichardt from fulfilling his great promise but he did experience an eleven-year major league career cut short probably by his active participation in the Players Association at the dawn of free agency.)

Another delicious tidbit Schmitt has unearthed is that before Red Wilson arrived in Madison, he played for the national high school team against New York high schoolers in the 1947 annual All-Star game at the Polo Grounds sponsored by the Hearst newspaper chain. Wilson’s manager was Ray Schalk, the upright catcher on the 1919 Black Sox, and one of his coaches was Honus Wagner.

The first chapters of Badger Baseball will be of interest to sports historians. Schmitt informs us that like most universities at the turn of the twentieth century, Wisconsin was roiling with the controversy about whether high-level competitive sport belonged in a university devoted to learning. In 1906, Wisconsin actually dropped both football and baseball, but three years later in the fall of 1909 the reinstated baseball team “made the longest trip ever taken by college athletes-seven thousand miles” (24) to play nine games against two Japanese university teams. Masao Matsuoka, a political science graduate of UW, was the inspiration for the trip that drew the praise of none other than President William Howard Taft who said “it cannot be but of advantage to the universities in...