The Milwaukee Brewers at 50: Celebrating a Half-Century of Brewers Baseball by Adam McCalvy (review)

Perhaps better than any sport, organized baseball and the writers who cover it are willing and qualified to present the history of the sport to consumers. This is especially true in years that encompass anniversaries of championships or the births of teams. As such, the fact that Adam McCalvy, a beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has produced The Milwaukee Brewers at 50: Celebrating a Half-Century of Brewers Baseball should be no surprise. He is in the perfect position to present the rich history of the team in a positive light for both diehard fans of the Brew Crew and for the casual fan as well. That history is colorful and diverse. Trust me, I know.

As a life-long Brewers fan, each page of this book flooded my memory bank with memories of twi-night doubleheaders at County Stadium with my dad and uncle when we watched players like Yount, Molitor, Surhoff, and Sheffield. I also took my wife to her first opening day at Miller Park in 2003 to watch a seriously outmatched Milwaukee team lose 11–9 to the St. Louis Cardinals. I remember the day eight years later when the team made the league championship series for the first time, since I was two, thanks to Nyjer Morgan and his alter-ego Tony Plush.

The work itself is long on visual evidence of the team’s history. Each chapter is full of high-quality color and black and white photographs from the Brewer archive. These include action shots of famous games, infamous individuals, and snapshots that help to capture the vibe of not only playing in Milwaukee but being a fan. In this regard, of particular note are photo essays about the history of team mascots like Bernie Brewer (he was inspired by real fan Milt Mason who lived on top of the scoreboard at Milwaukee County Stadium in 1970 until the club had their first sellout), the World Famous Racing Sausages, and institutional defining broadcaster Bob Uecker. Moreover, the photos of events like the “victory parade” the city threw for the Brewers after they lost the 1982 World Series will cause a flashback for lifelong fans and provide a starting point for the next generation of the True Blue Brew Crew.

Pictures are not the only reason to pick this work up. Given that it is, for lack of a better term, a “Coffee Table Book,” the work is short on text. That does not mean that a reader should skip over it. McCalvy has provided anecdotes from and about Brewers legends such as Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Jim Gantner, and Gorman Thomas and lesser known fan favorites such as Dan Plesac, Teddy Higuera, and Rob Deer. Richie Sexson, Jeromy Burnitz, and Jeff Cirillo are also present. Also present in pictures are Ben Sheets, Rickie Weeks, and J. J. Hardy. He also provides insight related to owners Bud Selig and Mark Attanasio. Finally, McCalvy shows how people like Harry Dalton, Doug Melvin, and David Stearns turned the, at times, less than mediocre team into a contender on the field with acumen and guile, if not money.

With superb photos and direct, if not exhaustive text, there are not many holes in the work. Aside from the glory days of the early 1980s and late 2000s, McCalvy also delves into (with the help of Hank Aaron and Uecker) the fight that Bud Selig undertook to get a stadium issue passed so that the team would not be forced to relocate. However, any discussion of the tough times in Milwaukee, including the collapse of the team on the field thanks to financial hardship experienced by Selig in the early 1990s and throughout the mid-2000s, are ultimately glossed over.

The academic researcher will need to find another source of information if they wish to draw conclusions on why the team struggled for a large part of their existence. The general...