More than ever, managers are employing defensive shifts to take base hits away from some of baseball’s most dangerous hitters, particularly dead-pull hitters who bat from the left side.  The Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo and the Red Sox’ David Ortiz come to mind and I am sure we could name others.

Despite the attention and complaints registered about the strategy that finds Scooter Gennett and other second sackers grazing in short right field waiting to snatch a line shot or grounder for an easy out that would normally be a hit, the shift phenomenon is not new.

Baseball buffs and old-timers  recall the Ted Williams shift, where Cleveland Indians manager Lou Boudreau deployed three infielders on the right side of second base in an effort to cool off baseball’s last .400 hitter and arguably the best hitter that ever lived.  The Kid was too proud to change his swing or thought that doing so would have a long term effect.

But there was another case much closer to home 60 years ago.  Milwaukee Braves third baseman Eddie Mathews had hit 47 homers in 1953 and batted .302.  The following year, Sporting News scribes noted that Mathews’ average for the first two months of the 1954 season was 55 points below what it was at the same point in ’53 and that his RBI total  was down 40 percent.  Mathews blamed a Williams-like shift for the problem, where infielders and outfielders were stacked to the right. “If I try to cross them up by hitting to left field,” Mathews said, “I pop up more often than not. If I try to pull  naturally to right, they take hits  away from me with the shift. The solution? “I guess I’m going to have to hit the ball out of the park,” he said.

Well, as Williams once said, those are 16 to 1 odds and not very promising.  Mathews hit a higher percentage of homers for the ’54 Braves (8.4) but his total dropped to 40 and his average to .290. His RBI total went from 135 in 1953 to 103 in 1954.  Significantly, Mathews actually drew more walks (113) in ’54 than in ’53 (99).  If they won’t move, sometimes you can wait them out. In later years, both men we to the opposite field more often because they were simply hitting the ball where it was pitched.

The shifts will continue for the remainder of the season and surface in the playoffs and World Series. But don’t worry about it. The stars will still get their hits, even if they have to go yard to do it.  Besides, Williams and Mathews are both in the Hall of Fame and hit 1,033 home runs between them. Not bad for having the defense keyed to stop them.

Sources: Mathews Declares Shifts Have Curbed His Hitting. The Sporting News. June 23, 1954. p. 21.The Baseball Encyclopedia. Macmillan. 1979. p. 1169.

“Fans, have your cell phones and mobile apps ready for today’s virtual reality baseball game with the Milwaukee Brewers at beautiful Miller Park.”

The public address announcer at Brewers home games likely won’t say that but baseball has definitely changed since the days of pencils, scorecards and television sets with rabbit ears.  At the February 27, 2018 monthly dinner meeting of the World Series Club at Alioto’s restaurant in suburban Milwaukee, Brewers operations manager Rick Schlesinger told  an audience of 55 enthusiasts that baseball had “only scratched the surface” on adapting to technology while maintaining the core of the game experience.

“If teams are looking for ways to legitimately gain an edge, it’s technology,” Schlesinger said.  Video replay, managers using tablets for scouting reports, and the use of recorded electronic communications from the bullpen and press box to the dugout have changed the game. “Video replay has almost eliminated the manager-umpire arguments,” said Schlesinger, who predicted that the pitch clock is coming and expects teams someday to apply technology to measure a batter’s swing or find an outfielder’s best path to a catch.

The technological revolution has also changed the needs of the fans, particularly the millenials whom the Brewers want to frequent Miller Park. They use their cellphones to monitor game action, watch replays, and check statistics without having to watch every pitch. Schlesinger said they also look for social activities that include alcoholic beverage consumption and the opposite sex.  “We can fit all of your needs,” he tells them. “Just give us a chance.”  He added, “The experience of going to the ballpark is still very valuable. Baseball is a safe harbor for that.”

The harbor will also get an upgrade at Miller Park and the Brewers’ spring training site, Maryvale Park in Phoenix Arizona. The Miller Park club level will have a new corridor with TV monitors and a big-league food and drink menu. “People in the suites and seats will (also) experience a high-level of food and beverage options,” Schlesinger said.  Most of a $16 million project scheduled for completion next January 31 will focus on improving spring training facilities for the players to make the Brewers even more competitive with other clubs.

The fans of course will continue to see sustained excellence on the field, Schlesinger told the World Series Club members and guests. The additions of outfielders Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain will energize the offense and general manager David Stearns will make whatever moves required to sustain a consistent playoff contender and to bring a World Series championship to Milwaukee. “We are feeling good about the guys we’ve got but he’s not going to sit on that,” Schlesinger said. “The plan is to play deep into October.”

They called him Aspro.  No, he was not the Jetson’s dog Astro but he was a Houston Astro, even a Houston Colt .45s ballplayer.  Bob Aspromonte was also the last active player who had once been on the roster of baseball’s Boys of Summer, the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers of Flatbush Avenue and Ebbets Field. A Brooklyn native, Aspromonte had an inauspicious debut at age 18 playing with his hometown heroes, striking out as a pinch hitter against St. Louis Cardinals’ southpaw Don Liddle – once of the rival New York Giants – on September 19, 1956.  He played sparingly for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1960 and 1961 before becoming property of the new Houston club which began play in 1962.

I met Aspromonte in 2014 at the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Convention 44.  He joined a panel of former Houston Colt .45s that included Hal Smith, Jimmy Wynn and former Houston beat writer Mickey Herskowitz.

One thing that impressed Aspromonte the most was that major league baseball even considered launching a franchise in the Gulf Coast metropolis, population approximately 600,000.  The .45s did not have the best of homes, makeshift Colt Stadium that became more famous for heat, humidity and mosquitoes than the team’s won-lost record.  But the park was situated across from the building site for the Houston Astrodome, which opened in 1965. Aspromonte played mostly third base and occasional first base for both Houston editions, including the first four seasons in the Dome.

Aspro batted a healthy .266 with 11 home runs in the Colts’ first season.  When the strike zone expanded in 1963, Aspro’s average dropped to .214. He rebounded to have his best overall season in 1964 with a career-high 12 home runs and a .280 average.  His best batting log was 1967 in the spacious Astrodome – .294  with 58 RBIs in his fifth straight season as an All-Star third baseman.

The Year of the Pitcher – 1968 – was Aspro’s last in Houston but he joined a National Western division champion with the Atlanta Braves in ’69. Traded to the New York Mets in 1971, he spent one year there but was released after hitting just .225, ending a 13-year career.

Aspromonte is 79 years old and remains in Houston.  His older brother, Ken, played briefly for the Milwaukee Braves and Chicago Cubs and managed the Cleveland Indians in 1973-74.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night, MLB Commissioner Emeritus Allan H. “Bud” Selig received the first Johnny Logan Friend of Milwaukee award from the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association (MBHA). Logan was the former Braves shortstop on the World Series and pennant-winning teams of 1957 and 1958 and a fan favorite. Danny Logan, Johnny’s son, made the presentation.

Selig certainly deserved the recognition and got a second standing ovation of the evening after accepting the award at the Milwaukee Athletic Club at an event called, “An Evening with Bud Selig.”

Baseball fans may be familiar with Selig’s efforts first to keep the Braves in Milwaukee as the leader of Teams, Inc., formed in the Fall of 1964 when the jilting of the Braves to Atlanta was imminent. The group made an offer to buy the Braves and then sought an expansion franchise to begin play at Milwaukee County Stadium as early as 1967.  On July 24, 1967, a crowd of 51,144 fans packed the stands or sat in the outfield to watch the Chicago White Sox play the Minnesota Twins in an exhibition game.  (A $100,000 guarantee presented to Twins’ owner Calvin Griffith was Selig’s trump card, though an event some forecast for failure was a resounding success. The troubled Sox could have moved to Milwaukee but the Allyn brothers did not sell. They had played games in County Stadium in 1968 and 1969 to test-market baseball’s return there. In May 1968, the National League chose San Diego and Montreal over Milwaukee and the dream of bring baseball back to the city seemed dead.

As Selig told it last night, his group – now the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc. learned that the Seattle Pilots expansion club that joined the American League was in trouble after one season. They had finished last in the Western Division, did not draw well, and lacked an owner in March 1970 when, on the 31st of the month, Milwaukee Sentinel sports editor phoned Selig and told him, “You got it.” The Seattle Pilots, like the Boston Braves, moved to Milwaukee during spring training.

The mission to bring baseball back to Milwaukee may have began after the last Milwaukee Braves game at County Stadium September 22, 1965 when a wheelchair-bound woman, eyes filled with tears, told Selig, “Do you have any idea how much this team meant to me?”  Then she pointed a finger at Selig and said, “Don’t you fail because you’re all we’ve got.”

His love of the Braves went back to March 1953 right before National League owners approved the shift of the club from Boston to Milwaukee.  He and his college roommate, fellow Milwaukee resident and future Milwaukee Bucks owner and Wisconsin U. S. Sen. Herb Kohl joined him in a visit to an unprecedented site — a completed County Stadium, built to attract a major league team.  “Oh, my goodness gracious,” Selig recalled, “we’re going to get a major league baseball team.”  Selig told the audience that the Braves established a great legacy.  “You have a lot to celeb rate, you really do.  Selig called the Braves’ leaving “beyond heartbreaking, and said, “We were lucky. We had 13 years of watching a team that was remarkable.” Based on his own experiences as a Braves fan, Selig said it taught him a life lesson “to watch what a baseball team could do for a community.”

Selig recalled the Braves’ victory in their first game at the new stadium when center fielder Billy Bruton hit his only home run of the 1953 season in the 10th inning to beat Gerry Staley and the St. Louis Cardinals. The MBHA paid tribute to Bruton with four grandchildren and their adopted uncle and aunt, Mr. & Mrs. John Davis on hand. Bruton played eight seasons in Milwaukee 1953-1960 (with Logan at shortstop every one of those seasons) but was traded to the Detroit Tigers in 1961 for second baseman Frank Bolling.   Bruton is the 15th inductee into the MBHA Honor Roll.  A plaque describing his career is in the concourse at Miller Park that houses the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association exhibits.

As for Johnny Logan, the MBHA had a vacant pace setting for him and there was a moment of silence in his memory.  Danny Logan told the story of a baseball fight between the Braves and Dodgers after Bruton had hit two home runs off Don Drysdale. Logan batted next and paid the price when he was hit by a pitch on his funny-bone. Logan said to Drysdale, “Why don’t you hit the guy who hit the home run? Talk to me.” With that, Logan dropped his batting helmet and walked toward the mound and the melee manifested.

Perhaps Rabbi Marc Berkson, who gave the blessing before the meal and delivered the benediction, said it best: “In spite of all of our differences, the Milwaukee Braves brought us all closer together.”

Willie Mueller is 58 years old, still lives in the Milwaukee area and loves to talk baseball.  Maybe not about today’s baseball but his brief career in the Milwaukee Brewers’ and Montreal Expos’ organizations and how pitchers need to get batters out and get more work, pitching off a higher mound.  “Hitters can hit speed,” Mueller said in a talk to the World Series Club of Milwaukee earlier this year.  “Cutters and sliders get batters out.”

Mueller believes that baseball scouts today are always looking for hard throwers, meaning young fellows who can bring it 95 miles an hour. When they get called up from the minors, it’s a real eye-opener. “It’s a hard place to develop kids who have, or need, a breaking ball.”

Mueller knows of what he speaks, having signed a $15,000 contract (including incentive clauses) with the Brewers as a 17-year-old prospect on July 13, 1974. Mueller had graduated from West Bend West HS, the oldest of four kids, and signed the contract that scout Emil Belich had offered him. His rookie league manager was John Felske, who caught for the Brewers in 1972.

While in the minors, Mueller grew from a green kid 6′ 0″ and 180 pounds who threw 89 or 90 miles an hour to a 6′ 4″ 232-pound (he slimmed down to 220, according to Baseball Reference) Brewer pitching candidate who could throw 95. The road to the majors went through Newark (r NJ) in the New York-Pennsylvania League and both Clinton and Burlington, Iowa of the Class A Midwest League.  His managers were Matt Galante and former Milwaukee Braves infielder Denis Menke.  Mueller went 4-3 at the Class A level in 1976, then won 15 games for Menke’s Burlington Bees. His roommate, Paul Molitor, earned league MVP honors for the team that won the Midwest League pennant.

The jump from AA to the majors came  in 1978, when Mueller went 7-5 with a 2.91 ERA at Holyoke (PA) of the Eastern League. He joined the Brewers in Boston on August 12 (with “no clothes, no toothbrush, no nothin'”) in the midst of a four-team pennant race that summer between the Red Sox, New York Yankees, Brewers, and Baltimore Orioles.

Mueller recalled that catcher Charlie Moore “made sure the glove would pop” in the bullpen. He entered a game in the fifth inning and worked 3 2/3 innings in relief of starter Mike Caldwell, a 22-game winner that season. Mueller struck out Butch Hobson looking, then gave up his first hit — a triple to Rick Burleson, who scored on second baseman Don Money’s error. Jim Rice flied out to end the inning.  Mueller retired Carlton Fisk and Fred Lynn (on a line drive right into Mueller’s glove) and  struck out Bob Bailey for his first 1-2-3 inning.  He set the side cdown in order in the seventh, striking out Hobson looking for the second time. In the 8th, Jerry Remy singled with one out and Rice lined a home run over the green monster for two runs.   “That’s the one that’s still travelin’,” Mueller joked.  Fisk fouled out and Lynn, the AL Rookie of the Year and MVP, struck out to end Mueller’s major league debut.

On his lengthy stint, Mueller called himself “old school” and believes relief  pitchers should pitch longer if they are getting hitters out, instead of being automatically removed for eighth-inning setup men and ninth-inning closers. He recalled that Rollie Fingers was “in the game to win the ballgame.”

Mueller pitched four more games and nine more innings for the Brewers that season and earned $21,000 (Baseball Almanac) and that was it. He toiled as a relief pitcher for the Vancouver AAA club of the Pacific Coast League over the next three seasons, working in 129 games. He pitched his last game for the Brewers on September 20, 1981, six weeks after the player strike ended, and allowed four hits and one run in two innings. He then joined the Montreal Expos’ top farm club at Denver and working one game before the end of the 1981 season.  In 1982, Mueller worked 56 games for Montreal’s new AAA club, the Wichita Aeros — managed by former Brewer and Milwaukee Brave outfielder Felipe Alou — and returned to the Brewers organization in 1983. He never got back to the majors but worked 40 games out of the bullpen.

When Mueller’s major league career ended, it began, one might say,  six years later. Not in the real major leagues but in the classic baseball movie Major League, starring Charlie Sheen of Two and a Half Men fame and Brewers Hall of Fame sportscaster Bob Uecker.  The director asked Mueller to appear in the film after the auditioner asked if anyone knew someone “big and ugly who could throw the ball pretty hard.” Thus Mueller became the Duke, who lost the game in the bottom of the ninth inning. His teammates included Brewer pitcher Pete Vuckovich who played power-hitting first baseman Haywood and former major league and UW player Mike Hart.

Since his retirement from professional baseball, Mueller — whose top salary was $32,000 –has expressed disgust over the emphasis on home runs and offense and the attitudes and actions of today’s players.  He has seen the mound shrink from 16 inches to 10, a strike zone that depends almost totally on the umpire, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs.  Mueller said Ryan Braun’s denial in the biogenesis case “was the hard pill to swallow for the old Brewer guys.”

It is even harder to swallow the substance abuse, showboating and virtual absence of team cohesiveness. “There’s no meeting of the minds, there’s no backgammon, there’s no cards. Everybody is in it for themselves.”

That was not the way of the Bamberger-Rodgers-Kuenn Brewers that Mueller and the fan public fondly remember. Mueller ran laps with Jim “Gumby” Gantner and roomed with Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, now manager of the Minnesota Twins, who confided to Mueller, “I’m glad I got the job but I’m a little apprehensive. I know I can coach but I don’t know if I can be the guy who can lay the law down.”

Molitor need not fret.  If he’s anything like his old-school roomie, he will find a way.

Mueller coached baseball for 17 years after his professional career ended, nine of those at Concordia University.  Mueller still holds baseball clinics in the greater Milwaukee area.

Denis Menke signed as one of the Milwaukee Braves’ bonus babies in 1958, right in the middle of the team’s glory years, for $125,000.  The Braves had won the World Series in 1957 and the National League pennant in 1958, and had signed John DeMerit and Robert “Hawk” Taylor for similar amounts in 1957 .  Menke did not have to join the big club right away because of a change in the bonus rule and had to wait until 1962 when the Braves broke camp in Florida.  By then, the Braves were a mediocre club that owner Louis Perini sold in November 1962 to a Chicago syndicate that would move the team to Atlanta.

Menke was expected to be a five-tool player who could hit, hit with power,run, throw and field.  He became a five-position player under manager Bobby Bragan in 1963, playing shortstop, third base, second base, first base and left field.  He socked 20 homers as the regular shortstop in 1964, suffered through an injury-plagued 1965 season, then spent two years in Atlanta before he was traded to the Houston Astros, replacing an injured Joe Morgan at second base.

When he returned to shortstop in 1969, Menke played in nearly every game and achieved All-Star status in in 1969 and 1970.  In 1972, he was part of one of the most famous trades in major league baseball history, going to the Cincinnati Reds with Morgan, pitcher Jack Billingham and outfielder Cesar Geronimo for second baseman Tommy Helms and slugging first baseman Lee May.  Menke retired after the 1974 season, returning to Houston for 29 more at-bats and just three hits.  Afterwards, he coached in the major leagues and managed in the minors, winning a Class A pennant in 1977 with a guy named Paul Molitor.

As guest speaker at the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association dinner this past spring, Menke recalled joining the Braves in April 1962 after completing a minor league apprenticeship that took him to Class D Midland and Class B Cedar Rapids in 1958.  In 1960, he had a bust-out year at Yakima (Washington) Braves and hit 28 homers, drove in 103 runs and stole 14 bases, batting .336 for a Class B fifth-place club. In 1961, Menke earned Rookie of the Year honors with the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League and seemed to be the player that Braves farm directors John Mullen and Roland Hemond had dreamed of.

Menke started the 1962 season with the Braves but hit just .192 with a pair of homers and 16 RBI in 166 plate appearances. His first major league home run came on May 15 off Pittsburgh’s Earl Francis in a 5-4, 10-inning loss to the Pirates.  Menke returned to Toronto (where he met his wife, Marguerite), then rejoined the Braves in September. On the 19th, Menke got plunked by Don Drysdale, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ hefty right-hander known for pitching inside.  “Welcome back to the big leagues, kid,” Drysdale taunted.  Drysdale won his 25th game that day and Menke went hitless. Still, Menke was thrilled to be in Milwaukee. “I couldn’t wait to get to the clubhouse,” he told his audience.  He saw Hank Aaron’s locker, Warren Spahn’s, Del Crandall’s, Frank Bolling’s.  Really something for a 22-year-old who grew up on a 480-acre farm in Bancroft, Iowa, just 15 miles from Minensota’s southern border. Every player who did not have a car got one from Wally Rank to drive for the season.  Manager Birdie Tebbetts gave him trouble. “We’re gonna have you hit like (Joe) DiMaggio,” the skipper said as Menke took extra batting practice. “I went beserk,” Menke recalled. “I walked out of the cage and said, ‘I’m getting out of there.'”  Shortly thereafter, it was, “Denny, we’re sending you down (to Toronto). You need to play every day.” Continue reading →

Talk about a field of dreams for a couple of Milwaukee kids.  George “Butch” Blanchard and Ron Cardo were lucky enough to serve as Milwaukee Braves bat boys, Blanchard  during the glory years of the late 1950s when the Braves won a World Series, a pennant and a near-pennant (losing a playoff to the Dodgers in 1959) and Cardo in the early 1960s after growing up in Milwaukee listening to Braves radio announcer Earl Gillespie call the hits, homers, RBIs and even the flyouts, groundouts and strikeouts. “I can still hear Earl Gillespie’s voice,” said Cardo in an appearance at the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association Testimonial dinner in April.

Cardo calls Blanchard “the guru of batboys” who made sure the right lumber was ready for the slugging entourage in the Braves’ dugout, from Henry Aaron to Eddie Mathews to Joe Adcock. Blanchard was bat boy for the 1957 World Series champions.  “When they struck out, I got after them,” said Blanchard, six feet and 212 pounds at the time and later the head football coach at Brown Deer HS for 32 years.  They worked for $2.50 a game, which sounds okay until one realizes that the bat boys had to get the clubhouse ready for the game two hours ahead and put in another couple of hours afterwards to clean up the place. “I made more money on partial World Series shares than I did the whole year,” said Blanchard.

Blanchard recalled that the players did not get food after the game, unlike today when a full buffet is common in post-game clubhouses.  Infielder Felix Mantilla and pitcher Juan Pizarro used to order two hamburgers from a nearby diner at 35 cents apiece, costing each player 70 cents out of a dollar. They let Blanchard keep the change.

Ray Jackson’s restaurant used to give Braves players free barbecued ribs after games.  Miller Brewery gave players cases of beer if they hit a home run. All the while, Milwaukee had the most successful franchise in baseball 1953 to 1959 and drew two million fans a season that had a love affair with its team.

“The spirit that existed was unparalleled,” Blanchard said to the dinner audience. “It’ll never happen again.”

Blanchard literally had a hand in the Braves’ World Series victory when pinch hitter Vernal “Nippy” Jones batted for HOF pitcher Warren Spahn in Game 4  and claimed that a pitch hit him in the foot.  Manager Fred Haney asked for the ball and showed it to umpire Augie Donatelli, who noted a small speck of black shoe polish and awarded Jones first base. Mathews followed with a home run that gave Milwaukee a 7-5 victory, knotting the Series at two games apiece. Lew Burdette won Games Five and Seven with complete-game shutouts and the Braves were the best in baseball.

In 1959, Blanchard recalled seeing Pittsburgh Pirates lefthander Harvey Haddix hailing a cab after pitching 12 perfect innings at County Stadium and losing the game to Burdette in the 13th inning on Adcock’s double. “His eyes were all swelled up, he had been crying for a long time,” said Blanchard. “My guts were sinking there with Harvey Haddix and how he felt.”

Blanchard remembered that bat boys got other fringe benefits, like taking one road trip a year.  On a trip to Philadelphia, Blanchard met King & I  star  Yul Brynner and appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

Ron Cardo got some different kinds of thrills when he joined the club as a batboy in 1961. He was batboy in the visitors’ clubhouse at County Stadium and got to know all of the players in the National League.  Cardo started in junior high school and worked every home game for the next three years. Before he got the job, Cardo and his buddies used to wait for the visiting bus until it parked by the stadium gate and got broken bats and old baseball caps for their trouble.

One day, the Cubs came to town to play the Braves and Cardo told his friends, “I know Alvin Dark; he’ll get us into the game.”

“He got us tickets and told us to meet him at the ramp,” Cardo remembered. “He had a cap and ball for me and let me sit in the dugout for batting practice.” In 1961, Dark became manager of the San Francisco Giants and Cardo got a new job, too — as a Braves batboy. “Before I knew it, I was pushing a broom and shining shoes.”  Cardo learned an important lesson on the job: “Don’t approach a player when he strikes out.” He recalled one night when former Dodger first baseman Norm Larker struck out and “took all the bats in the bat rack and threw all of them out on the field.”  Once, Ernie Banks struck out and quietly told Cardo, “We’ll just have to get ’em next time.”  Banks’ HOF teammate third baseman Ron Santo gave Cardo a Wilson A2000 glvoe and some fielding instruction to go with it. As for Willie Mays, Cardo said humbly that, “Willie knew that if he needed something, he could look for me.”

 

 

 

“The expereience I had, I will never forget it,” said Cardo.

And who could? Players giving you baseballs, gloves, autographs and smiles?

“Butch” is right — Unparalleled, never to happen again.

 

Continue reading →

Another regular season has passed for 13 baseball teams in the Big Ten Conference.  Wait! I thought there were 14 teams in the conference now.  Right you are.  But the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the #2 athletic money maker in the nation in 2013, has not restored the sport.  The barriers:

1.  The lack of facilities that plagued the program throughout its history.  While other Big Ten schools fund baseball, softball and club baseball and have first-class ballparks with grandstands, concessions, restrooms and parking lots, Wisconsin remains the only BigTen team without varsity baseball.

2.  Restoring baseball means adding at least one women’s sport to meet federal Title IX gender equity regulations.  In 1989, a complaint filed with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) prompted an investigation that found too big a gap between male and female athletic participation on campus that has since been narrowed or virtually eliminated.  A compliant athletic program has also built its major sports into nationally competitors whic generates revenue to fund nonincome sports.

3.  The combination of baseball facilities and another women’s sport such as lacrosse or field hockey requires a multi million dollar development plan and likely an endowment.  Further, baseball has become increasingly competitive nationally  and restoring Wisconsin baseball means a major investment in facilities, coaches and recruiting, scholarships, promotion and fan interest.  While it would be wonderful to have baseball and be part of the Big Ten in that sport, the fans and alumni must support it and not take it for granted as was done for much of its history.

Wisconsin baseball would actually enhance competition among conference schools and be a throwback to the Athletics for All philosophy that laid the foundation for department growth going back to the 1920s.  Former baseball players say the money could be raised almost immediately for baseball and a complementary women’s sport. They also support women’s athletics but are embarrassed that Wisconsin is the only Big Ten school without baseball.  Other schools fund men’s and women’s sports in a sustainable fashion, though some do without certain sports and thus have a smaller list of offerings.

It may take something as extravagant as al all-weather baseball/softball complex that would get rid of the cold spring weather issue and make baseball and softball partners in UW spring sports.  That is another large investment but would sustain both programs and put Wisconsin on the map once again for being the first to complete such a project.  It would bring the Wisconsin Idea into athletics and allow UW teams to host regional and national tournaments or nonconference games.

It’s a dream but nobody ever dreamed Wisconsin would be without baseball for 117 years.  If we can go to the Rose Bowl and the Final Four, we can provide a home for our national pastime.  Enjoy the photo gallery below.

Sixty years ago, Sam “Toothpick” Jones pitched a no-hitter for the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.  He walked the bases loaded in the ninth inning, then struck out the next three Pittsburgh Pirates for the no-no.

Forty-five years ago, Ernie Banks hit his 500th career home run, also at Wrigley Field, off Pat Jarvis of the Atlanta Braves.  A line shot into the left field bleachers on a cold, dreary day like today.

To back up, May 10 was also an important day for a certain former Chicago Cub.  Jim Hickman turned 78 years old.  He was one of my favorite Cubs, playing six seasons on the North side and belting 21 home runs in 1969 and 32 in 1970.  A classic right-handed hitter who always hit well in the Friendly Confines.

On to some current stuff. The Chicago White Sox beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 4-2, at Miller Park.  A tough loss for an improving Mike Fiers but the Sox’ Chris Sale simply looked great.  Brewers fans need not despair over a 5-4 record for new manager Craig Counsell.  I predict they will make a playoff push but may need to make another trade to do it. Counsell was an excellent choice to replace Ron Roenicke because of his knowledge of he game and of players, having played 16 seasons, and his fresh approach to infuse energy into a team that still languished from the 2014 collapse.  It seemed that the disappointment of ’14 was still with the team and a change had to be made, even if it was for that reason alone.

The Cubs may challenge for the NL Central, too, or they may not. A rumored deal sending former All-Star shortstop Starlin Castro to the Mets has not happened yet but the Cubs may make the move for some more pitching.  I really thought they had enough to contend this year but it’s not working out.  And they seem determined to play Addison Russell at shortstop.  I would hate to see Castro go but would not be surprised if he was sent East.

With another Big Ten baseball regular season concluded, it is now 24 years since the Wisconsin Badgers competed on the diamond at the varsity level.  Wisconsin beat Purdue, 5-2, in the first game of a doubleheader behind Joe Wagner, who transferred to Central Florida and was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers.  Jason Schlutt dropped a heartbreaking second game, 1-0.