The Demolition of Milwaukee County Stadium
This article was written by Rick Schabowski
This article was published in From the Braves to the Brewers: Great Games and Exciting History at Milwaukee’s County Stadium (2016)
The final chapter for Milwaukee County Stadium took place on the morning of February 21, 2001, when a bulldozer pulled down the last remaining grandstand section. It was very fitting that one of those who got dirty as the dust settled from the final demolition also got dirty while playing shortstop for the Milwaukee Braves in their glory years – Johnny Logan.
Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig was there. He said it was a strange feeling to drive on the freeway toward a place he’d been to many times and see no County Stadium. After he got there he said, “I sat there, looking at everything, and it was a very emotional thing. I’m not ashamed to tell you I had tears in my eyes, only because I thought of all the things that had happened there. I looked back at Miller Park, and then I looked back again, and I started thinking about Aaron and Mathews, I’ve had Eddie [Mathews] on my mind obviously, and about Yount and Molitor. It was really a riveting moment for me. In a strange sense, I was almost saying thank you, grateful for everything that happened in it.”1 The extra thoughts Commissioner Selig had about Mathews were because he had died three days earlier.
The demolition company hired for the task was Midwest Rail & Dismantling, which won the bidding with an $827,000 price tag. The stadium board expected the contract to be around $2 million, but Midwest was allowed to keep all the income generated by the recycling efforts. The timetable mandated that all the rubble be out of the area by April 1, 2001.
Recycling of material was a major concern during the demolition. Approximately 95 percent of the 50,000 tons of the rubble generated was recycled. A large part of that consisted of 30,000 tons of concrete and 7,000 tons of steel. The concrete was crushed on site and was used as fill for the plaza and parking lots around Miller Park. The steel was delivered to Miller Compressing Company, a Milwaukee-based scrap-metal firm; a number of other local companies; and a foundry in Waupaca, Wisconsin, where it was melted down and recycled. About 100,000 to 150,000 bricks were in good shape, and were placed on pallets and used in construction projects. Some 55,000 bricks were saved as souvenirs to be used for fundraising.
The stadium board also got $500,000 from the sale of stadium memorabilia and equipment. Some of those items included the chalet used by Bernie Brewer, a microbrewery, the sales of individually bottled dirt from the infield, and the stadium lights, which were sold for use in a stadium in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
Some other artifacts stayed nearby. The foul poles were shortened and installed at Helfaer Field, a Little League field next to Miller Park. A lot of the infield dirt was used in Miller Park and Helfaer Field.
The demolition was delayed for one year because of a crane accident during the construction of Miller Park, on July 14, 1999, that killed three workers and destroyed the roof work that had already been completed.
In early February, the wrecking crew made two unsuccessful attempts to take down part of the grandstand area along left field, prompting Johnny Logan to joke, “They swung and missed.”2 Finally, on February 21, the last section fell.
In addition to the foul poles at Helfaer Field, the park also includes – on the picnic concourse next to the field – an outline of where home plate was located. In the parking lot, a bronze plaque marks the spot where Henry Aaron’s 755th home run landed. County Stadium might be gone, but it is not forgotten.
RICK SCHABOWSKI, a retired machinist at the Harley-Davidson Company, is currently an instructor at the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership in the Manufacturing Program, and is a certified Manufacturing Skills Standards Council instructor. He is also president of the Ken Keltner Badger State Chapter of SABR, treasurer of the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association, and president of the Wisconsin Oldtime Ballplayers Association, and is a member of the Hoops Historians and Pro Football Research Association.
Notes
1 Alan Borsuk, “Rise and Fall of Baseball,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 22, 2001.
2 Jeffrey Phelps. Photo: “Thanks For the Memories,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 14, 2001.