The Tale of Two Baseball Cities: When the Chicago White Sox Played in Milwaukee

On September 22, 1965, the Milwaukee “miracle” ended the way it had started, with an extra-inning ballgame. The new Milwaukee Braves won their inaugural home game on April 14, 1953, on a 10th-inning home run by center fielder Billy Bruton. And the lame-duck, Georgia-bound Braves ended the Milwaukee era with an inglorious loss when center fielder Mack Jones was doubled off first base on Henry Aaron’s line drive to Los Angeles Dodgers center fielder Willie Davis. For a team that averaged 6,859 die-hard fans in 1965, almost twice as many, 12,577, including this author and his 16-year-old twin brother, were on hand to say goodbye to their heroes.

The Braves are the only baseball club to field a team in every professional league, tracing their roots back to the 1871 National Association. In the National League, they continued their winning ways, snagging eight pennants before 1900, but fared poorly in the 20th century, winning only two pennants, in 1914 and 1948, and one World Series in 1914. With attendance dropping over 80 percent to 281,278 in the four years after the ’48 pennant, and with Milwaukee, the home of Boston’s top farm club, looking for a major-league tenant for its new ballpark, Braves owner Lou Perini received permission from the NL to move his team to Milwaukee on March 18, 1953, before the American League could shift a team there. And so the Milwaukee “Miracle” started.

When the Braves arrived in Milwaukee on April 8, 12,000 fans greeted them at the train station and 60,000 viewed a parade welcoming them to town.1 And the love affair would continue to grow from there. In that first season, Milwaukee topped the previous year’s Boston attendance in its 13th home game and established a new NL attendance record, 1,826,397. In the next season, Beertown was the first National League city to exceed 2 million spectators, and did so for four consecutive years, including 1957, when the Braves became the city’s only World Series champion. They won another pennant in 1958 and could have won two more – finishing one game out of first place behind the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956, and losing a best-of-three playoff to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in 1959. But as this young, exciting team aged and the performance on the field dropped off, the enthusiasm waned and the attendance started to fade, falling below 1.5 million in 1960, barely topping 1.1 million in 1961, and sinking below 800,000 in 1962. On November 16, 1962, Perini sold 90 percent of the Braves to a group of Chicago investors.2 With the poor attendance and the promise of a very large radio and TV market in the Southeast compared with the very limited market in southeast Wisconsin, Milwaukee’s fate was sealed on October 21, 1964, when the Braves board of directors voted to move to Atlanta pending NL approval. On November 7 the league delayed the move until the 1966 season.3

In late 1964 a group of civic leaders formed a nonprofit organization, Teams Inc., led by Edmund Fitzgerald, president of Cutler Hammer, Inc., as the organization’s president and spokesman. (Fitzgerald’s father was chairman of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and the namesake of the ore freighter that sank in Lake Superior  in a storm in November 1975 with the loss of all its crew.)  Teams Inc. recommended that Milwaukee County fight to have the Braves fulfill their lease and play the 1965 season in Milwaukee. The group believed the only way to attract another franchise would be to give “overwhelming support” to the Braves.4 Teams Inc. was convinced that “Milwaukee’s image as a baseball city had suffered,” “that most people in Organized Baseball and much of the public outside Wisconsin feel that Milwaukee has lost interest in baseball and that in recent years … failed to properly support the Braves.” The group’s findings also indicated “a substantial belief on the part of those same people that within the last four years a definite anti-baseball [bias] has developed.”5 Teams Inc. denied that Milwaukee was anti-baseball, and believed that the recent negatives had overwhelmed the years of enthusiastic support for the Braves. Its goal was to provide the Braves with the same level of support as the first eight years.

Fitzgerald appointed auto dealer Allan H. “Bud” Selig to the challenging job of convincing Wisconsinites to buy tickets to the lame-duck Braves games to demonstrate that Milwaukee was a good baseball town and should be home to a major-league team. Although he was successful with the home opener, it was an otherwise a futile effort. Selig recalled that it was “the toughest kind of selling job you ever want to do.” As for the rest of the season, Selig stated, “We had no other successes.”6

On July 28, 1965, the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc. was formed to attract a major-league baseball team with Selig as president.7 Without baseball in 1966, the group petitioned the baseball establishment for an exhibition game at County Stadium to prove that the city was still a good baseball town and counter the negative attitude after the vitriol and nasty court fights. Selig & Co. then persuaded the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins to play an exhibition game in County Stadium on July 24, 1967. White Sox owner Arthur Allyn agreed, thinking it would be good for the city and baseball. He was very supportive of Milwaukee during the 1964-65 turmoil over the Braves leaving. On a local TV show in August 1965, Allyn said, “Milwaukee has greater economic potential than Atlanta.”8 The local chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America even rewarded him in January with the “good neighbor” award for his efforts.9

Selig’s group hit a home run in its first event at County Stadium, proving Milwaukee was not a good but a great baseball town. The ballpark had record attendance – 51,144 spectators filling every nook and cranny, including 2,000 spectators on the outfield warning track. An estimated 5,000 were turned away. The previous Beertown best was a Ladies Day game on August 19, 1954, with 50,024 attending.10 That was the only other County Stadium game to exceed 50,000. Milwaukee Journal sports editor Oliver Kuechle related that “Bud Selig, president of the Brewers, set a goal of 40,000 in the beginning and kept insisting it would be gained. He was often greeted with knowing smiles, just young enthusiasm. But the daily sale mounted and today Selig has been proven right.”11 To avoid any accusations of gimmicks to boost attendance, regular major-league prices applied, and there was no push for large corporate involvement.

As an all-out effort to prove to Organized Baseball that it needed Milwaukee, Selig invited important baseball dignitaries. In addition to the White Sox owner, Twins owner Calvin Griffith attended and was enthusiastic, saying, “The greatest criterion in the world for awarding Milwaukee a franchise is this crowd crying for baseball. If some clubs were smart, they’d consider moving here.”12 Commissioner William Eckert “expressed surprise and delight at the size of the turnout, but refused to predict Milwaukee’s chances for getting a new franchise.”13 AL President Joe Cronin was “equally noncommittal; but obviously excited about the one-night return of the Milwaukee Miracle.”14 But skeptics asked: Did the appearance of the commissioner and AL president signal that baseball had moved on from the lawsuits from the Braves departure?15

The game was delayed 40 minutes because Eckert and his party arrived late. It was the first time two teams from the same league had met in an in-season exhibition and the first time two AL teams had played in Milwaukee since the American League’s first year, 1901.16 White Sox manager Eddie Stanky, the American Association MVP second baseman for the 1942 Milwaukee Brewers, was linked to another important County Stadium event as the opposing St. Louis Cardinals manager in the Braves’ first home victory in 1953. The fans were well entertained and saw something that had never occurred at County Stadium before – three routine fly balls becoming ground rule doubles as they landed among the roped-off spectators on the warning track. They saw future Hall of Famers and two minor-league pitchers who would never make it to the majors; one pitched four scoreless innings and struck out one of the future Hall of Famers, Harmon Killebrew, with the bases loaded, and the other took the loss as the visiting Twins defeated the White Sox, 2-1.

What was in it for the Twins and White Sox to play on a day off? According to the Milwaukee Sentinel, each earned at least $30,000, raking in 75 percent of the ticket revenue plus 28 percent of the concessions.17 The county did not charge for the ballpark, under an agreement for any team moving to County Stadium, with a $1 rent for the first million fans. Milwaukee fans argued that Major League Baseball not only made a mistake leaving Milwaukee and that the city needed a team sooner rather than later.

On October 30, 1967, White Sox owner Arthur Allyn announced that his team would play an unprecedented nine night games at County Stadium in 1968, one against each American League opponent. Allyn cited a drop in White Sox attendance, including 170,000 ticket refunds because of poor weather. Allyn accused Chicago sports writers of knocking the White Sox “because the club did better [in the pennant race] than the writers had anticipated.” An article in The Sporting News a few days later cited another factor: “(M)any people here were fearful of traveling to Comiskey Park because they were afraid of the possibility of a race riot.”18

In 1967, the White Sox failed to attract a million fans for the second season in a row and for only the third time since 1951.19 In addition to the attendance boost Allyn hoped to gain at County Stadium, he was looking to expand the White Sox’ TV market. This was an interesting change of heart for Allyn. In 1965, Cincinnati Reds president Bill DeWitt suggested that the Chicago teams each schedule nine games in Milwaukee until it obtained another team. Cubs president Phil Wrigley had no objection to doing so if it was good for baseball, but Allyn rejected it outright.20 By 1968 the two teams had switched positions; “A few years ago yes, we probably would have done it,” Wrigley said. “But we spent 21 years in the second division and now the fans are showing interest again. Public relations wise, moving games out of Chicago would be disastrous.”21

This did not halt Selig’s efforts to attract a major-league team. “While we continue working towards another permanent franchise for Milwaukee, we feel that this interest can in part be satisfied by a series of games such as this,” he said. “At the same time, we can continue to demonstrate Milwaukee’s outstanding credentials as a major league site.”22 A proposal by Allyn to move his Triple-A Pacific Coast League club to Milwaukee was rejected because the local group did not want to be considered minor league.23 Were the Brewers hoping to convince Allyn to move his team 90 miles north to Milwaukee?24 Some thought so. Al Hirshberg in the Boston Herald-Traveler wrote that Allyn would deny it, but that “this is only the prelude to a move of his entire baseball operation to Milwaukee on a permanent basis.”25 Sports Illustrated wondered if “Allyn was trying to prod the city of Chicago into building a new stadium” With all three of its major sports stadiums over 50 years old and in poor neighborhoods, Chicago had a problem.26

There was a great deal riding on the season with both organizations needing strong attendance. The White Sox needed to replace income lost with the sagging turnout in Chicago; Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc. needed to continue dazzling the baseball world to attract another team. Both were happy with the outcome. For the nine County Stadium games, attendance totaled 264,297 for an average of 29,366. This was higher than Detroit’s season average of 25,085, which led the AL. Although Milwaukee accounted for 11 percent of the White Sox’ 81 home games, it accounted for 33 percent of its home attendance. The crowds at County Stadium ranged from a low of 18,748 against Baltimore in May to a high of 42,808 for the final game in August against the eventual World Series champion Detroit Tigers, whose roster included former Braves hero Eddie Mathews playing his final season. Two games exceeded 40,000 in attendance, two drew over 30,000, and four drew in the 20,000s; only the game against the Orioles drew less. This was in spite of poor weather for the first four games including rain and/or cold, as well as tornado warnings for the inaugural event. As proof that interest in baseball was still strong, the turnout for those bad-weather games averaged 23,901. The gate for Comiskey Park’s 72 games totaled 539,478 for an average of 7,439. Not helping the numbers was the White Sox’ collapse on the field; they finished with a 67-95 record after a pennant-race season in which they finished just three games out of first place. Although Milwaukee produced the turnout boost needed, total attendance for the White Sox was still down, dropping by more than 180,000 from 985,634 in 1967 to 803,775 in 1968.

While the off-field numbers were great, the on-field results were poor. The White Sox won only one County Stadium game and suffered four shutouts in its eight losses. Chicago scored only 16 runs and plated more than two runs only twice, in a 5-4 loss to the Yankees and an 11-6 defeat by the Senators. The White Sox’ only win was by 2-1 over Cleveland. Even with the poor weather, they experienced only one rain delay, 29 minutes in their first game; another game ended after five innings. The only extra-inning game in the White Sox’ two years in Milwaukee was a loss to Baltimore on May 28, 1968, on a 10th-inning home run off the left-field foul pole by Baltimore’s Paul Blair off White Sox knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm. Two months later, on July 22, 1968, Wilhelm made his 906th appearance, tying Cy Young’s career record.27

There was also other news making the Milwaukee sports headlines. The Milwaukee Sentinel reported on the day after the White Sox’ first County Stadium game that AL President Joe Cronin said, “Please tell the fans that Chicago has been one of the great towns of the American league and it has never, never dawned on anyone to move the White Sox out of Chicago. … I know the American League would never, never consider it.” And, in what would become an unfortunate headline: “Milwaukee ‘Almost’ Certain NL Pick.”28 But on May 28, the day of the second Milwaukee contest, the local newspapers reported that Milwaukee was bypassed in the NL expansion draft, with San Diego and Montreal selected instead. Milwaukeeans were asking if the National League still held a grudge against the city.  With the team losing out in the American League’s expansion announced the previous year, it would now require convincing a team to relocate to Milwaukee. It didn’t look as though it would be Chicago. Selig’s group, though, was not giving up.

To combat rumors that the White Sox were ready to move to Milwaukee, Allyn announced in September 1968 that they he had asked the AL’s permission to play 11 games a year in Milwaukee for the next three seasons. Allyn feared that if the request had been for one year, White Sox fans would have been questioning where the team would play the following year, which would have just added fuel to the rumors. At the same time, he announced a planned $46 million stadium complex downtown with facilities for baseball, football, hockey, and basketball.29 This never came to fruition. Was it instead a ploy to allay Chicago fans’ fears and give Allyn more time to decide the team’s future?

At the Milwaukee Baseball Writers dinner in January 1969, Selig’s group brought in officials of four teams. In addition to Allyn, they invited Gabe Paul, the Cleveland Indians’ president and a member of the baseball executive council, who was the main speaker. (Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc. was courting him to garner favorable treatment from Organized Baseball as well as to show interest in the troubled Indians. (The following July the Milwaukee Journal reported that Cleveland’s owner, Vernon Stouffer, had rejected two offers for his team, including one from Milwaukee. Selig denied making an offer, stating, “This one is news to me.”30) Calvin Griffith, the Twins owner, who was supportive of Milwaukee’s efforts, mentioned that Bob Short, the new owner in Washington, “Short told me bluntly that if he didn’t show a profit in Washington, he would move the ballclub.”31 Would that make the Senators another Brewers target?

The White Sox’ second– and last – season in Milwaukee was different than the first. County Stadium still outdrew Comiskey Park, accounting for nearly 34 percent of the total home attendance. But the numbers were down 25 percent, even though there were two additional games with the two expansion teams. The turnout was still a very respectable 198,211, an average of 18,019, which was exceeded only by Boston’s and Detroit’s season averages. But the 1969 average was lower than the lowest game crowd in 1968; and the first year’s average, 29,366, was higher than the attendance of any game in 1969. The only team to draw better the second time around was the Senators, who drew 25,520, an increase of 4,898, with new manager Ted Williams making his first return to Milwaukee since the 1955 All-Star Game. The top crowd was 26,659, against Oakland in July. The lowest attendance was 8,565, in wintery, blustery 40-degree temperatures for the first County Stadium game of the season in April.

Unlike the previous season, no game exceeded 30,000 in attendance; only four games drew more than 20,000. Five drew in the teens and two less than 10,000. But in view of the Comiskey Park total of 391,335, an average of 5,591, Milwaukee was still important to the White Sox’ revenue. Why were there fewer fans at County Stadium? The primary reason was “disenchantment” at not winning an expansion team.32 Constant announcements from Chicago and from the American League that the White Sox would not move reinforced that hopelessness. Also, the White Sox’ poor record and the “novelty” of being the second home had run its course.33 Even the local press had lost interest, carrying fewer articles and commentary before the games.

On the field it was a different story in year two, with the White Sox winning their first five games and six of seven. They finished with a record of 7-4, a .636 winning percentage compared with .486 at Comiskey. They had a young, slugging team that scored 48 runs in the 11 games, triple their first year’s run production. They were shut out only once, by the pennant-winning Orioles, instead of four times, and recorded a 2-0 shutout of their own over the A’s in July. Milwaukeeans didn’t know when the White Sox beat the Seattle Pilots in June for their fifth consecutive victory at County Stadium that they were watching what would be their new home team 10 months later.

Although the Milwaukee games boosted the White Sox’ attendance and revenue, did moving the games out of town play a role with the declining Comiskey crowds? Yes, but it’s more than that because there were other issues. The longer the South Siders played in Milwaukee, the more doubts crept into fans’ psyche. Wrote Bob Markus in the Chicago Tribune, “The point is that Chicago fans are reluctant to give their hearts to a team that may not be around next year. And as long as the Sox play in a city that has been on the make for a big league team ever since the Braves left, there is going to be doubt.”34 That wasn’t the only issue; many Chicagoans were nervous about going to Comiskey, which was located in a bad neighborhood aflame with racial tensions. Although the White Sox brass generally did not discuss those issues, they actively promoted the ballpark’s location right off the Dan Ryan Expressway. And to make their supporters feel more secure, they installed 235 floodlights in and around the ballpark to make it appear brighter and safer.35 Noting the Cubs’ poor attendance when they had bad seasons, columnist David Condon wrote, “So forget that poppycock about the ‘bad’ neighborhood. It’s the White Sox team that has been keeping fans at home.”36 This would be validated as the club floundered on the field in 1970 and the decline at the turnstiles continued, with attendance falling below 500,000.

Why didn’t Arthur Allyn move the White Sox to Milwaukee after all of the rumors, the strong County Stadium attendance, a potentially good proposal, and his own aging stadium in a questionable neighborhood, to name just a few reasons? Because his brother John didn’t want him to. On July 18, 1969, the intrigue started to build when the team announced that Arthur Allyn had completely withdrawn from baseball operations with the White Sox to concentrate on other divisions of the Artnell Company, the White Sox’ corporate parent. Artnell’s president, Leo Breen, became the White Sox’ executive vice president and general manager.37 Soon after, Bob Addie, writing in The Sporting News, reported a rumor that the White Sox had been sold. “According to one source (always ‘unimpeachable’), the White Sox have been sold to a Milwaukee group and definitely will be in the Suds City in 1970,” Addie wrote. “There have been many rumors along the same line all summer and some saw the move by Arthur Allyn, owner of the White Sox, to relieve himself of many baseball duties as a sure sign he is getting out”38

And within days, on September 23, the sale was announced, but it was not to a Milwaukee group. Instead it was to Arthur’s younger brother, John Allyn who owned half of the stock of the Artnell Company. He was taking over 100 percent ownership of the team as part of an amicable agreement between the brothers, who were the company’s only stockholders. John simply didn’t want his family to lose the team. Partly bearing out Addie’s reporting, Arthur apparently had received a proposal to buy the club. His brother suggested that the board of directors vote on it, a move he knew would fail. In April 1970, sportswriter Jerome Holtzman confirmed this in an article discussing the challenges faced by the White Sox after their poorest home attendance since 1944 and the lowest Comiskey crowds since 1931. Holtzman wrote, “It’s no wonder, then, why owner Arthur Allyn tried to peddle the club. Arthur was ready to grab the $13.8 million from the Milwaukee Brewers, Inc. – and run. The only reason he didn’t was because his younger brother, John, refused to sell.”39

It is also doubtful that they would have been able to move the team to Milwaukee even if Arthur had been able to persuade his brother to do so. AL President Cronin had repeatedly stated that Chicago was not moving. The placement of the White Sox in Chicago is one of the primary reasons the American League succeeded in its efforts to become a major league. With Organized Baseball’s memories long and the leagues still strong entities on their own in the ‘60s, the AL could not give up on the Windy City. Other league owners were reluctant to give up a presence in Chicago. Oakland A’s owner Charles Finley, a Chicagoan, said, “It’s unlikely that anyone could get sufficient votes from American league owners to transfer the franchise from Chicago.”40 With those comments, it seems doubtful owners would have sanctioned any proposal to move the club.

The new Allyn in charge wanted to keep all of the games in Chicago because he expected strong fan support. It became official on November 25 when John announced that he had rejected the Brewers’ request to continue playing games in County Stadium, “I don’t see any point in continuing playing there,” he said. “We were trying to help prove to people in baseball that Milwaukee could support a major league team. Now there is nothing more to prove. They aren’t going to get a team.”41

The Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc. ultimately was successful in getting a team, achieving its goal by buying the Seattle Pilots out of bankruptcy, at the last minute, late in the evening of March 31, 1970. They had followed the advice of Teams, Inc., the predecessor of the Brewers, and kept Milwaukee in the baseball news, highlighting the idea that it was a good baseball town and would support a franchise. The two White Sox seasons in County Stadium played a huge role, providing the strong attendance and positive experiences needed to counter the concerns associated with losing the Braves. After errors in awarding an expansion franchise to Seattle without a viable stadium, complicated by political issues that raised questions about the promised stadium, Organized Baseball wanted a proven ballpark with a track record; that was County Stadium.

A proud SABR member since 1997, thanks to a Christmas gift from his wife, DENNIS D. DEGENHARDT is proud to call himself a baseball nerd. He has been active at the local level, serving as the treasurer of the Ken Keltner Badger State Chapter since 2001. For the past 12 years, Dennis’s day job is president/CEO of Glacier Credit Union in West Bend, Wisconsin. Dennis will be retiring in the summer of 2017, when he will further pursue his next career as a baseball researcher and writer.

 

Notes

1 Bob Buege, The Milwaukee Braves: A Baseball Eulogy (Milwaukee: Douglas American Sports Publications, 1988), 15.

2 Buege, The Milwaukee Braves: A Baseball Eulogy, 15.

3 The Sporting News, November 7 and 21, 1964.

4 The Sporting News, February 6, 1965.

5 The Sporting News, February 6, 1965.

6 Milwaukee Sentinel, July 22, 1967.

7 Buege, The Milwaukee Braves: A Baseball Eulogy, 412-415.

8 The Sporting News, September 11, 1965.

9 The Sporting News, January 21, 1967.

10 Milwaukee Journal, August 20, 1954.

11 Milwaukee Journal, July 23, 1967.

12 Milwaukee Sentinel, July 25, 1967.

13 Milwaukee Sentinel, July 25, 1967.

14 Milwaukee Sentinel, July 25, 1967.

15 Washington Post, June 24, 1967.

16 Washington Post, June 24, 1967.

17 Milwaukee Sentinel, July 26, 1967.

18 The Sporting News, November 11, 1967.

19 Total Baseball: Seventh Edition (Kingston, New York: Total Sports Publishing, 2001).

20 The Sporting News, January 9, 1965.

21 Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1968.

22 The Sporting News, November 11, 1967.

23 The Sporting News, November 11, 1967.

24 Bob Buege, “The Birth of the American League,” in Baseball in the Badger State (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2001).

25 The Sporting News, November 25, 1967.

26 Sports Illustrated, November 3, 1967

27 Milwaukee Sentinel, July 23, 1968.

28 Milwaukee Sentinel, May 16, 1968.

29 The Sporting News, September 28, 1968.

30 Milwaukee Journal, July 11, 1969.

31 Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1969.

32 Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1969.

33 Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1969.

34 Chicago Tribune, September 27, 1969.

35 The Sporting News, February 22, 1969.

36 David Condon, Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1969.

37 The Sporting News, August 2, 1969.

38 The Sporting News, September 20, 1969.

39 The Sporting News, April 18, 1970.

40 Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1969.

41 New York Times, November 26, 1969.