By Michael Ford
“I loved sports, but I was the bespectacled chubby guy who was more interested in sports statistics,” Mike Ford admits. “I participated but I was not the first guy picked when it came to choosing up sides.” With this admission, Mike Ford begins a story about two aspects of baseball that consumed his attention as a boy living in Fond du Lac. The first is the Milwaukee Braves and the second concerns his collection of baseball cards. Both obsessions make for fascinating reading.
In March of 1953, the front office of the Boston Braves announced that the National League ball club was moving to Milwaukee. Wisconsin’s biggest city had a new ballpark, Milwaukee County Stadium, where Boston’s Triple A farm team, the Brewers, was scheduled to play that season. It was a scramble to move the farm team to Toledo, Ohio and prepare County Stadium for major league baseball. County Stadium had abundant parking space, which had been a problem in Boston, but it would take some time before the stadium could accommodate more than 36,000 fans.
The Boston Braves had fallen in the National League standings since they had gone to the World Series in 1948. The Braves won a tight pennant race that year with just two solid pitchers, Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain, inspiring the refrain “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.” In the World Series, however, they met the Cleveland Indians who had a better pitching staff with the two Bobs, Bob Lemon and Bob Feller, in addition to Satchel Paige the first African American pitcher to play in the World Series. The Indians beat the Braves four games to two. Attendance declined for the Boston Braves following that World Series loss and the team abandoned New England to migrate west to Wisconsin. The fans in Boston were left to rally around the Red Sox.
WINNING THE HEARTS OF WISCONSINITES
Immediately after arriving in Milwaukee, the 1953 Braves began to thrive. There were a lot of new young players including Joe Adcock who had been obtained from the Cincinnati Reds where Ted Kruszewski had locked up the first-base job. Eddie Mathews became the toast of Milwaukee with 47 home runs and 135 runs batted in. Del Crandall returned from military duty during the Korean War to establish himself as the Braves catcher. Johnny Logan had come from Boston and improved his game as Milwaukee’s starting shortstop for the rest of the decade. Lew Burdette emerged as a workhorse as both a starter and reliever. Bob Buhl and Johnny Antonelli emerged as solid starting pitchers. Andy Pafko came over from the Brooklyn Dodgers to provide veteran presence. Importantly, the Boston Braves unlike the Red Sox had become color-blind and had several talented black players in their system. In 1953 George Crowe was a holdover from Boston, Jim Pendelton had been obtained from the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Billy Bruton came up from the minor leagues to replace an aging Sam Jethroe.
The Milwaukee Braves won their first series on the road over the Cincinnati Reds. Since my family had moved to Fond du Lac from the Cincinnati area in 1951, I should have been excited about the new matchup with the Reds. Yet it took me a while to catch up with the sudden appearance of a team in Milwaukee. Then on April 14, 1953 the Braves played their first game at Milwaukee County Stadium. Warren Spahn added to his legend by pitching a complete 10-inning victory over the St. Louis Cardinals that featured a walk-off home run by Billy Bruton. I must confess that on that day I sped home from school on my Schwinn bicycle, but it was not to learn what had happened in the Braves game. No, I was anxious to get home to see my new baby sister.
During the summer of 1953, Blaine Walsh and Earl Gillespie gradually became a regular part of our days and nights in the Ford household in Fond du Lac. KFIZ, the local radio station, carried their play-by-play broadcasts of Braves baseball. I got a Milwaukee dark blue hat with the letter M on it, and a Braves tee shirt that I wouldn’t take off lest the team might lose. When my mom finally insisted on putting my shirt in the laundry, she once found me sleep-walking near the washing machine in the basement looking for that shirt.
I also discovered baseball cards that summer. The 1953 Topps cards were beautiful. Every player from the 10 major league teams had his glossy portrait painted on the front of the card, and the back contained a statistical summary of his career. I just couldn’t get enough of these cards. Since the Braves didn’t televise their games, the cards provided my picture of the players I heard about on the radio. A kid could get five cards with one piece of bubble gum for a nickel. So my weekly allowance permitted me to collect up to 20 packs—100 cards. I didn’t really care much about the bubble gum, which lost its flavor quickly.
The 1953 Braves were an exciting team. They had good pitching. They had speed on the bases. They had some awesome power. On April 29, first-baseman Joe Adcock became the first player ever to hit a home run to dead center field at the Polo Grounds against the New York Giants. Adcock’s homer cleared an eleven-foot wall that was marked as being 483 feet from home plate. Eddie Mathew’s 47 home runs led the league in that category. Warren Spahn won 23 games to only 7 losses and led the league with an earned run average of 2.10. The team finished 30 games above .500 even though the powerful Brooklyn Dodgers won the National League pennant 13 games ahead of the Braves. A total of 1.82 million fans filled the stands at the Braves home games in Milwaukee, which pleased the team’s owner.
Milwaukee County Stadium was only 60 miles from Fond du Lac, where I enrolled at the brand-new Elizabeth Waters Grade School. A car trip of 75 minutes made it easy to take in even some night games. My dad took me at night to my first Braves game, this one against the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was a big deal for a kid to leave Fondy after 6 pm, stay up to see the game, and not get home until after midnight. Moreover, I got to see the players in person in their colorful uniforms just like on the baseball cards. I remember Dodger catcher Roy Campanela and shortstop Pee Wee Reese. Unfortunately, Brooklyn won. But Eddie Matthews and Johnny Logan kept the Braves in the game.
Before the 1954 season, the Braves traded a prized young pitcher, Johnny Antonelli to the New York Giants. In return, they got Bobby Thomson, hero of the Giant’s 1951 pennant winners. He hit the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” a ninth inning three-run home run that put his team into the World Series that year. Bobby had become expendable since a young guy named Willie Mays was waiting to take over center field for the Giants. The Braves thought Bobby would be a key bat in their lineup. Alas, Bobby Thomson broke his ankle in spring training and was out for the year. The 1954 Braves had to rely on a promising young player named Henry Aaron, called up from their Class-A farm team to make the adjustment to the major leagues. On April 23, Henry hit his first major league home run, something he would do 754 more times in his long career, eventually breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs. That had been the most hallowed record in sports.
Later in the summer of 1954, I visited my grandparents in Ohio and spent a lot of time sorting and trading baseball cards. I was astounded to learn that Joe Adcock once again accomplished what seemed almost impossible, this time against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. He hit four home runs and a double in one game! It was a record-setting feat against one of the best teams in baseball. His record for hitting 18 total bases in a game stood until 2002, when Shawn Green of the Los Angeles Dodgers batted for 19 total bases as payback against the team from Milwaukee, but this time it was against Milwaukee Brewers.
A KID AND HIS CARDS
Meanwhile, I was amassing quite a collection of baseball cards from the two card companies, Bowman and Topps. I traded my duplicates to get cards from 1952 and earlier. I also discovered that Johnston Cookies included picture cards of Braves players in its cookie packages. I had to have all these, but my weekly allowance didn’t go very far in buying cookies. My mom often popped into Thurman’s Market on Park Avenue for a few items at a time and maintained a tab at the store. The account also allowed her to send my sister and me to pick up items that she needed at the last minute. Cookies were something that the whole family enjoyed, so I figured why not just put them on the tab. It worked! Without consulting my parents, I began stopping by Thurman’s every day or two to get another package of cookies. I became emboldened by the ease of obtaining things “on the tab.” I started adding a pack or two of baseball cards to every order. My addiction drove me to keep going back for more, though I knew it was wrong!
One day my mom came back from Thurman’s after having settled up her tab. She asked me if I knew anything about a bunch of small purchases that had shown up on her bill. I was in trouble! My punishment: No more allowance for 2 months! Dish washing and drying for the next two weeks. Dusting, vacuuming. No reading comic books. No TV. And no baseball cards.!?! This had been a major mistake on my part.
It was only after I got my allowance back that I discovered that I did not need to resort to petty larceny to obtain baseball cards from Johnston Cookies. To obtain the complete set of Johnston baseball cards, all I had to do was to send modest payment and a few labels from their cookie packages.
Aside from being fun collecting, baseball cards had some educational value (as did comic books). I was a chubby, bespectacled kid who would fit today’s definition of “nerdy.” In the fifties, I spent a lot of time sorting the cards in different sequences – by card number, by team, by position, by batting average, and by earned run average. The mathematical pastimes became valuable experiences that I later utilized to design computer procedures to extract data for reports. With my baseball cards arranged in a sequence, I learned strategies to quickly find the card that I was seeking – helpful when later conducting searches of ordered sets of data in computer programs. So, you see. I wasn’t wasting my time but building for the future.
I also liked to keep track of some of the various statistics of my favorite players on a daily basis. Therefore, I taught myself how to compute batting averages and earned run averages. More good practice in math. Another facet of owning a large cache of baseball cards was learning how to negotiate deals with other card moguls. I had to devise ways to give up cards I was willing to part with, to obtain other cards that I dearly coveted. One soon discovered a deal that seemed good at the time could later turn out to be regrettable. Yet, some so-so deals turned out to be unexpectedly wonderful, like calling Henry Aaron up from the minors!
The 1954 Braves once again competed for the National League pennant, but it was the year for Willie Mays and the New York Giants. This was the World Series in which Willie Mays’ over-the-shoulder basket catch of a Vic Wurtz line drive that has been labeled ever since as “The Catch.” That defensive gem got replayed on TV thousands of times. The Braves finished in third place, only eight games behind the Giants. On the mound, Gene Conley at 6′ 8″ emerged as the third starter behind Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette, as the effectiveness of Bob Buhl began to diminish. Eddie Matthews, Joe Adcock, and catcher Del Crandall provided home run power. The Braves’ astounding popularity throughout Wisconsin drew more than 2.1 million fans to Milwaukee County Stadium during the season. The attendance statistics led all baseball by a wide margin. That year the magazine Sports Illustrated hit the market, and its inaugural issue featured a cover shot of Country Stadium and Eddie Matthews batting at home plate. The Dodgers could no longer call the Braves “bush leaguers,” for the team had arrived in a big way.
The 1955 Braves team once again contended for a pennant but fell 13-1/2 games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers in second place at the end of the regular season. Bobby Thomson returned to the lineup but failed to live up to his 1951 potential. Henry Aaron started to show just how good he could be. Both he and Eddie Mathews drove in more than 100 runs each. The Braves acquired catcher Del Rice as a backup to Del Crandall. Rice helped Bob Buhl once again become a winning pitcher. Ray Crone came out of the bullpen to throw strikes in critical games during the season and even had a few starts. First baseman Joe Adcock had a batting stance that crowded the plate, making him susceptible to being struck by inside pitches. He suffered a broken wrist when hit by a pitch in July, and the veteran George Crowe came off the bench to finish out the season at first base. The Braves again drew over 2 million fans to cheer their team on.
On a cloudy, drizzly Saturday in May of 1956, my dad and I attended the game between the Braves and the Reds. The Braves chose to start pitcher Ray Crone, who had been pitching well in the early part of the season. Cincinnati started Johnny Klippstein, a pitcher who had shown signs of brilliance. In the second inning, Klippstein hit a batter and then walked two batters to load the bases. First baseman Frank Torre then hit a sharp line drive caught by a rookie outfielder named Frank Robinson, who was unable to throw out the Braves’ runner on third who tagged up and scored an unearned run. Klippstein struck out the next two batters and managed to survive through seven innings with more walks but no hits by the Braves.
In the eighth inning, when a Cincinnati runner reached third base, the Reds player-manager, the 37-year-old Birdie Tebbets, against all baseball lore, entered the game as a pinch hitter for Klippstein. Ray Crone was up to the task and got Tebbetts out on a ground ball, preserving the Braves 1-0 lead. In the ninth inning with two outs, however, the Reds put together a single and a double to score the tying run.
This was becoming an unusual game! The two Reds relievers had preserved Klippstein’s no hitter through 9 and 2/3 innings—marking it as the first no-hitter of that length by three different pitchers. Finally, the Braves got a hit but could not score. Ray Crone continued to retire the Reds through the eleventh inning, getting tired in the process. In the last half of the eleventh inning, the Braves batters scored the winning run with a base-on-balls and two singles. So I had been privileged to witness 9 and 2/3s innings of no-hit baseball. Or was it? It seems like baseball record keepers have vacillated in their definition, so it may be somewhere in the record books with an asterisk. No matter what the record books may say, my dad and I witnessed a brilliant and heroic pitching feat by Ray Crone and three pitchers of the Cincinnati Reds.
The victory against Cincinnati did not save the Brave’s manager Charley Grimm, who was known as “Jolly Cholly” [sic] because of his outgoing personality. June of 1956 marked the end of his tenure as the Braves manager because the team had started the season with more losses than wins. Grimm had been a popular figure in Milwaukee. He had managed the minor-league Brewers before becoming the Braves manager in 1952 and Grimm was of German heritage, which played well in Wisconsin.
June 17, 1956 was Fred Haney’s first day as manager. Fred had announced that Joe Adcock would now be the Braves everyday first baseman and would not be platooned with Frank Torre. Joe Adcock responded by hitting three home runs in a double-header sweep of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. The first of those home runs was a monumental blast that made headlines around the country. The wall in left center field was 351 feet from home plate but Ebbets Field was unique in having double deck grandstands in the outfield that were 83 feet high. Joe was the only player in history to hit a home run onto the roof above the grandstands. That home run ball then rolled down onto the street outside the stadium. Joe just loved batting at Ebbets Field. He finished his career with 13 home runs there. Could I doubt that the Braves were supermen!?.
In August my dad and I came back to see the Braves beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 6 – 2. Bob Buhl pitched a complete game. The Dodgers started Roger Craig, who was relieved by Ed Roebuck and a young guy named Don Drysdale. I witnessed a Hank Aaron line-drive home run to left field, which I’m sure was still rising when it cleared the fence. I was privileged to see Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Gil Hodges as well as Jim Gilliam. Bob Buhl had become a Dodger killer in 1956, as he turned in 8 wins to 1 loss against them.
Under manager Fred Haney, the Braves entered a three-way race for the National League pennant with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds. My grandpa’s team, the Reds, fizzled at the end. With three games left in the season, the Braves were in the driver’s seat with a one-game lead over the Dodgers. Alas, the Dodgers won all three of their final games while the Braves lost two of three to the St. Louis Cardinals. By the margin of just one game, the Dodgers won the right to go to the World Series. Milwaukee once again led the major leagues in attendance with over 2 million spectators coming through their turnstiles. Yet the Braves just couldn’t quite give them the ultimate satisfaction the fans were seeking.
1957: THE YEAR OF CHAMPIONS
It would be difficult for me to say much more about the 1957 Braves. Henry Aaron became the Most Valuable Player in the League, and Warren Spahn won the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in baseball. Lew Burdette did the unthinkable. He won three complete games in the World Series. Eddie Mathews continued to hit for extra bases. Joe Adcock played when injured to help his team, Wes Covington emerged to replace Bobby Thomson, who was traded for Red Schoendienst. Bob Hazle showed up to bat over .400 late in the season, and pitcher Bob Buhl had another great year. The Braves led all of baseball yet again with more than 2.2 million fans coming to their home games.
By now, I have become a full-out Milwaukee Braves fanatic and attended four games with my dad and some of his fellow workers at Giddings and Lewis during this epic season. The drive between Fondy and Milwaukee was becoming easier as work crews improved Highway 41 between Fondy and Milwaukee County Stadium.
I attended the Braves game against the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 18. The Pirates were building their team with outfielders Roberto Clemente and Frank Thomas, and second baseman Bill Mazeroski in their lineup. Warren Spahn started the game for the Braves but was relieved by Lew Burdette after 4 innings. Henry Aaron was the hero of the game with two home runs, a single, and four runs batted in. The Braves won the game, 6 – 5.
In August, my uncle Jack Ford and his stepson Jim O’Brien were visiting us in Fond du Lac. They joined my dad and I for a game at Milwaukee County Stadium. It was a beautiful Wisconsin day and we had seats right behind the Braves dugout. The St. Louis Cardinals had come to Milwaukee to contend for the National League pennant with the Braves. Lew Burdette started for the Braves, and things didn’t look good when the Cardinals scored three runs in the first inning. Lew settled in through the next seven innings. Second baseman Red Schoendienst hit a two-run home run in the sixth inning. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Carl Sawatski pinch hit for Burdette and got a hit. John Demerit (a bonus baby who the Braves had on their roster) ran for Sawatski. The fleet-footed Demerit scored the tying run on a single by Frank Torre, who was playing first base for the injured Joe Adcock.
The Cardinals were threatening in the ninth, and manager Haney called on Warren Spahn as a reliever. Spahn induced a double play. In the 11th inning the Cardinals scored a go-ahead run on a double, fielder’s choice and sacrifice fly. It didn’t look good for the Braves.
In the bottom of the 11th inning, Frank Torre got to first base on a single, and Hawk Taylor (another bonus baby) was sent in to run for him. Eddie Matthews hit a single, too, and Taylor sprinted all the way to third base. Men were on first and third when—who else?—Henry Aaron came to the plate and hit a double to score both Taylor and Matthews. The Braves won an eleventh inning walk off against the Cardinals, sending 39,000 fans home happy. That had been my chance to see the Cardinal greats Stan Musial, Al Dark, and Ken Boyer in action.
My final two games of the ’57 season came in September, when the Braves had to keep winning to protect their lead over the Cards of St. Louie. On September 10, I attended a night game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Lew Burdette pitched a complete game as the Braves won 4-3. Both Eddie Matthews and Henry Aaron hit home runs. Much less drama than my previous game, but just as satisfying because the Braves won.
In late September, the day before my 14th birthday, I attended the final game of the regular season. Since the Braves had already clinched the National League pennant, this game offered Fred Haney the chance to rest the starters and allow the substitute players the opportunity to play. The oft-injured Joe Adcock did play in this game in preparation for his role in the World Series against the New York Yankees. Joe had torn ligaments in his knee and ankle. During this season he also had played with a broken fibula. There were no miracle surgeries in the 1950s to fix up professional athletes. Joe was to play the rest of his career with wobbly, painful legs.
The Braves did win 4-3 over the Cincinnati Reds, but that was beside the point. When the Braves played at home in Milwaukee County Stadium, a local car dealer always furnished a convertible to give relief pitchers a ride from the bullpen to their dugout before they came into the game. At this last game of the season the real highlight was that one lucky ticket holder got to take that convertible home. I was hopeful, of course. Yet, the odds were 45,000 to 1 against me. And the odds won out at this last regular game of the 1957 season.
I was in the ninth grade at Roosevelt Junior High School when the 1957 World Series began in early October. The games were played during the afternoons, and it tortured me during class as I wondered how the Braves were doing. Some teachers had radios in their classrooms. I also got updates between classes by transistor radio, the newest innovation in communication we were certain could never be improved upon. School absences rose during the World Series but my dad and mom wouldn’t allow me to skip school. I had no doubt that the Braves were superhuman. Nevertheless, the Yankees had also a formidable team with future Hall of Famers like Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Manager Casey Stengel.
The 1957 World Series opened at Yankee Stadium before a crowd of more than 69,000 fans. It was a battle between Warren Spahn and Whitey Ford, the aces of both staffs. It was to be Whitey Ford’s Day, as he pitched the Yankees to a complete game 3 – 1 victory. Spahn was relieved in the sixth inning. The next game at Yankee Stadium pitted Lew Burdette against Bobby Shantz. Both pitchers were shaky through the first three innings as the score was tied at 2 -2. The Braves scored two more runs in the fourth inning to give Lew Burdette the margin he needed to complete the victory for the Braves. The Series was tied at one apiece.
After a travel day, the Series resumed in Milwaukee before a capacity crowd of 45,804 rabid fans. The third game was not one that Braves fans wanted to watch as pitchers Bob Buhl, Juan Pizarro, Gene Conley, and Bob Trowbridge all failed to hold down the Yankee hitters in a 12 –3 loss. In the fourth game at home the Braves gave Warren Spahn a 4 –1 lead when Henry Aaron hit a three-run homer in the fourth inning. That seemed like enough for the Braves ace. But these were the New York Yankees our team was playing. They pieced together 3 runs in the ninth inning to tie the game. In the tenth inning. Spahn gave up another run. It wasn’t looking good for Spahnie and Braves. In the bottom of the tenth, a Braves pitch hitter named Nippy Jones’ shoe polish got him a trip to first base on a hit-by-pitch, after appealing to the umpire and pointing out the smooch on the baseball that had hit his foot. Johnny Logan came through with a game–tying double. Then Eddie Matthews followed with the walk-off, winning home run. The uproar at County Stadium was incredible – the beloved Braves were supermen!
The next day in Game Five it was Lew Burdette and Whitey Ford facing off. Both pitchers were on the top of their game. In the sixth inning Matthews, Aaron, and Adcock each hit singles to produce a run. That was all that the crafty Burdette needed to win his second complete game, 1 – 0. The Braves only needed one more victory to become World Champions!
After another travel day, the Sixth game was played at Yankee Stadium. Bob Buhl faced off against Bob Turley. Buhl did not pitch well, and after giving up a two-run home run to Yogi Berra in the third inning, Ernie Johnson came in to relief Buhl. The Braves tied the game on home runs by Frank Torre and Henry Aaron, but Hank Bauer’s home run in the seventh inning gave the Yankees a 3 – 2 victory and set the stage for a decisive Seventh Game.
The final game wasn’t looking good for the Braves when Warren Spahn came down with the Asian flu and unavailable. Against all wisdom, the Braves turned to Lew Burdette to pitch on just two days of rest. He faced Don Larsen. In the third inning, the Braves scratched together four runs and chased Larsen who was replaced by Bobby Shantz. Burdette allowed 7 hits yet pitched magnificently. Del Crandall’s home run in the eighth inning capped off a brilliant 5 – 0 victory by the Braves. The amazing Lew Burdette had pitched three complete games for three incredible victories. He gave up 2 runs to the mighty Yankees in those three key games. The Milwaukee Braves had broken the vice grip that New York had held on World Championships! The beer barrels were rolling out all over Wisconsin! The Braves were truly supermen!
Five seasons after moving west to Milwaukee, the Braves were the champions of Major League Baseball, the most popular team sport in the country. They had a roster filled with stars, each of them living, breathing superheroes in my eyes.
The 1958 Braves once again won the National League pennant easily over the Pittsburgh Pirates while starting to show some cracks in their armor. Joe Adcock was not the player he had been. Bob Buhl was injured so Spahn and Burdette had to work a lot of innings. Red Schoendienst and Johnny Logan were less productive than in the past. (Schoendienst would come down with tuberculosis in the following year.) The hurricane called Bob Hazle completely fizzled out. The front office obtained Bob Rush from the Chicago Cubs to become the third starting pitcher for the Braves. Henry Aaron and Eddie Matthews continued to deliver, though their numbers had declined from those of 1957. Attendance at County Stadium remained high. Nearly 2 million fans attended the Braves home games in 1958, therefore the owner should have been pleased with his investment. This was sports capitalism, after all.
The Braves once again faced the New York Yankees in the 1958 World Series. Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette pitched the Braves to wins in three of the first four games with Spahn hurling a brilliant two-hit shutout in Game Four. The Yankees were way behind in this World Series, 3 games to 1. Yet, they came from behind to win three straight games to beat the Milwaukee Braves. The Braves could not score enough runs in game six to help Warren Spahn. My dad attended that game in Milwaukee and remarked that it was a good game even though the Braves lost.
In two of the final three games, pitcher Bob Turley out-dueled Lew Burdett, the previous year’s World Series hero for Milwaukee. In those critical two games, New York scored a total of 13 runs to just 2 for Milwaukee. Turley single-handedly silenced the Braves power hitters. My supermen let down this sophomore at Fond du Lac’s Goodrich High School.
THE LONG GOOD-BYE
The Milwaukee Braves were still a formidable baseball power in the National League as its principal hitters and pitchers were prolonging their careers. On May of 1959 I had tuned in the radio broadcast of the game between the Braves and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The game started a little after 8 p.m. Lew Burdette was pitching for the Braves and Harvey Haddix for the Pirates. The Braves had their usual lineup including Eddie Matthews, Del Crandall, Joe Adcock, and the red-hot Henry Aaron. The Pirates missed their star right fielder Roberto Clemente. As I listened to the game, Lew Burdette was doing his usual performance of pitching to contact. He kept allowing hits but somehow wiggled out of giving up runs. Meanwhile, Harvey Haddix was being masterful with his pitches—putting them right where he wanted them and baffling the Braves hitters.
The innings went by—seven, eight, nine—and still no score. Not one Braves player had even reached base. Haddix had himself a perfect game, but the score was 0-0 nonetheless. I kept listening, though the hour had passed 11 o’clock. A cool wind picked up from Milwaukee’s Lake Michigan shoreline, and I wasn’t sure if all of the 19,000 fans were still hanging around. The stiff wind might have kept a long fly ball by Dick Stuart of the Pirates from going over the fence in the tenth inning. Harvey Haddix just rolled on through the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth innings – three-up and three-down for twelve straight innings. This was a record. As for Lew Burdette, the starting pitcher for the Braves, he gave up a hit here and there but no runs. I listened intently because this was such an unbelievable game.
In the thirteenth inning, Felix Mantilla became the first Braves player to get on base, which he reached on a throwing error. Eddie Matthews (yes, the big slugger) laid down a sacrifice bunt to move Mantilla to second. Haddix elected to walk Henry Aaron to set up a double play since the next hitter Joe Adcock was a slow runner. At this point, Haddix had lost his perfect game, because two men were on base. But he still had his no-hitter.
The stage was set. Joe Adcock later said that the wind seemed to calm down as he came to bat. Joe hit the ball over the fence in dead center field. Mantilla scored easily from second base. Henry Aaron, however, thought that the ball had not cleared the fence and that the game ended when Mantilla touched home plate. Aaron just headed to the dugout. As a result Joe Adcock passed Aaron on his jog around the bases. That meant that Adcock was only credited with a double—not a home run—and Aaron was out. As I listened on the radio to the confusion at the end of the game, the clock struck midnight.
This Haddix-Burdette four-hour duel was truly one of the most amazing baseball games ever played. Twelve innings of perfect pitching on one side and thirteen innings of shutout pitching on the other side. Lew Burdette is credited with the win. Harvey Haddix of the Pirates lost a one-hit game yet entered the record books for 12 innings of perfect pitching in one game. This type of game will never be played again. Today’s rules to speed up the games would not make it possible for a pitcher to lose a perfect game going beyond nine innings.
The only game I went to see at Milwaukee County Stadium in 1959 pitted the Braves against my old favorite team, the Cincinnati Reds. Warren Spahn was pitching for the home team and Jim O’Toole for the visitors. In the third inning, Spahn himself hit a home run. For a pitcher, Warren proved he also could swing a bat. He hit 35 homers in his major league career. The lead went back and forth with the Braves trailing the Reds 4 – 3 going into the bottom of the ninth.
The day before this game, the Braves had purchased the contract of Bobby Avila from the Boston Red Sox as a replacement for Red Schoendienst, who had come down with tuberculosis. In the ninth inning, Stan Lopata walked for the Braves. The fidgety Lew Burdette came in as a pinch runner, perhaps with the idea that Lew would relieve Warren if the Braves managed to tie the game. Warren Spahn tried to sacrifice but fouled off his third bunt attempt for an out. The recently acquired Bobby Avila then came to the plate. In his first game with the Milwaukee Braves, he hit a two-run home run deep to left field. I and 18,000 other Wisconsinites went home in a good mood.
Toward the end of the 1959 season, Milwaukee’s baseball team was competing for the 1959 National League pennant with two archrivals, both of whom had relocated to California from New York. They were the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. Bob Buhl returned to complement Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette as starting pitchers. Joe Adcock had respectable numbers in a part-time role. Johnny Logan, Henry Aaron, and Eddie Matthews all had great seasons in fielding and hitting. The pennant race came down to one final series. The Braves and Dodgers ended the season tied for first place.
In the subsequent playoff series, a two-out-of-three affair to decide which team would go on to the World Series, the Dodgers edged out the Braves in just two games. The first game in Milwaukee ended with Los Angeles holding on to a 3-2 lead for the final three innings of the game. Game two in Los Angeles was a nail bitter. The Braves led 5 runs to 2 going into the ninth inning, but the Dodgers rallied to tie the score in the bottom half of the ninth. The tie was not broken until the bottom of the eleventh inning.
With two outs, Gil Hodges got a base on balls. Joe Pignatano singled, advancing Hodges to second base. Dodger outfielder Carl Furillo then hit a ground ball to Braves shortstop Felix Mantilla. He fielded the ball cleanly but committed an error on the throw to first base, allowing Gil Hodges to score the winning run and sending the Dodgers to the World Series. Los Angeles eventually beat the Chicago White Sox, champions of the American League, to win the 1959 World Series.
The 1960 Milwaukee Braves yet again contended for the National League pennant with the same core of players. Notably, Warren Spahn at age 39 pitched a no-hitter on September 16 against the Philadelphia Phillies. Nevertheless, it was to be the year of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who finished seven games ahead of the Braves, and went on to win the World Series with the famous walk-off home run in Game 7 by second baseman Bill Mazeroski. The Braves home attendance dwindled to just under 1.5 million fans. Not even the no-hit game of the legendary Warren Spahn could rally the fans like he did in the 1950s.
I attended a couple of games in 1960. The first was in April between the Braves and the Cincinnati Reds. Carl Willey, a skinny 29-year old right hander completed a four-hit shutout to beat Jim O’Toole of the Reds 2 – 0. It was one of the best games ever pitched by Willey, still I would not have traded for his baseball card. Attendance at the game amounted to just 14,000 fans, which illustrated one of the problems of playing at the 48,000-seat Milwaukee County Stadium during the Spring. Cool weather often kept fans away.
It was July 21, 1960 that I attended a game between the Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals with my high school friend Gary Melcher. We had set aside a day to ride the Chicago and Northwestern train from Fond du Lac to Milwaukee, attend the baseball game, and catch the train back to Fondy. We left early in the morning and arrived in Milwaukee at the train station near the shore of Lake Michigan. We decided that since we had enough time that we would just walk to County Stadium. It turned out to be a lot further than we expected – it did not look that far on the map. We did get to the game on time but how lucky was I? Carl Willey was the starting pitcher again for the Braves. Only, on this occasion, pitcher Larry Jackson and the Cardinal batters got the win. The Braves squandered an early lead when fielding and throwing errors by Aaron, Matthews, and Johnny Logan opened the door for a Cardinal victory by 9 runs to 4.. We had become wiser about getting back to the train station, though. We caught a city bus to go back downtown.
The 1961 Braves team was beginning to have some fresh faces. Roy McMillan replaced Johnny Logan at shortstop, and a young guy named Joe Torre took over as catcher from the aging Del Crandall. Matthews, Aaron, and Adcock continued to drive in the runs, but Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette were losing speed and accuracy in their pitching. The Braves fell to fourth place in the National League. The attendance was down to 1.1 million. In March of 1961 the County Board had voted (with support from the Braves owner) to ban all carrying-in of beer or other drinks at County Stadium. That might have caused some fans to stay away. On April 18, Warren Spahn pitched the second no-hitter of his career as the Braves defeated the San Francisco Giants 1 – 0. Just 8,000 fans were in attendance, leaving 40,000 seats empty in County Stadium.
On July 1, a few weeks after I graduated with the Fondy High Class of 1961, my dad took my grandparents and I to the game between the Braves and the Reds. My grandmother was an avid Reds fan. Moreover, it was rare for SHE and my grandfather to leave their Ohio farm to visit us in Wisconsin. The Braves got out to a 5 – 0 lead on home runs by Henry Aaron and Joe Adcock. Lew Burdette was able to scatter hits through 8-2/3 innings but gave up a run in the ninth. Don McMahon relieved him and saved the victory. However, only 12,960 fans attended the game on that beautiful summer day.
From here the story of the Braves is one that Wisconsin fans know all too well. Lou Perini, the team owner, refused to allow television broadcasts of the Braves games. Therefore, when fans started becoming too nonchalant about attending games, the organization had no steady revenue from the sale of television rights on which to fall back. The sweetheart deals that lured the Boston franchise to move to Wisconsin had long since ended. Since Milwaukee owned the stadium and the parking lot, the county treasury began reaping nice profits from the lease with the Braves and parking fees. Milwaukee County refused to give these up although it did rescind its ban on carry-in beer in June of 1962. The Braves experienced a net loss in
that 1962, and Lou Perini decided to sell the team.
One of Milwaukee’s civic-minded businessmen who had lured the Braves to relocate, Frederick Miller, owner of the Miller Brewing Company, had died in a plane crash in 1954. He might have been able to mount another campaign to purchase the franchise. In the absence of a financial bid, owner Perini sold the Braves baseball club to Bill Bartholomay, an outside investor with no connection to the Badger state.
Bartholomay did allow Braves games to be televised. Yet it was too late. The two teams from Chicago, the Cubs and White Sox, and the new Twins club from Minneapolis had already acquired the baseball broadcast rights of the biggest TV stations in the Upper Midwest. Play-by-play broadcasting of these teams blanketed part of what could have been the Braves viewing area. Bartholomay also tried unsuccessfully to sell stock to residents of Milwaukee and Wisconsin in order to create a publicly owned non-profit corporation, the type of ownership structure that had anchored the Green Bay Packers since 1923.
Prior to my senior year at UW-Madison in August 1964, I attended a Braves game for the last time with my fiancée and some friends. The Braves lost to the San Farncisco Giants, 7-2. I did get to see Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, and all three of the Alou brothers Matty, Jesus, and Felipe (although Felipe was with the Braves, not the Giants). It was the last time I saw Aaron, Matthews, and Spahn.
In the meantime, Atlanta, Georgia was becoming a major transportation hub in the South. It began construction of a new stadium in the hopes of attracting an expansion team. Atlanta offered broadcasting rights over a cluster of states in the Southeastern U.S. Moreover, there were no other major league teams nearby. The city of Atlanta was free to offer a cut in parking and concessions revenues. Moreover, Atlanta did not have cold weather in the early season like Milwaukee.
Atlanta’s offer to host the Braves was too good for Bartholomay to turn down. He made the decision to move the team at the end of 1964. Its existing lease with Milwaukee County forced the Braves to remain in Wisconsin through the 1965 season but they were in Atlanta in 1966. A lawsuit to force the Braves back to Milwaukee or to force Major League Baseball to provide a new team was denied by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Nothing stood in the way of the Braves leaving the state.
The Milwaukee Braves did not have a losing season. They were always in the thick of the pennant race in the National League. They had legendary players. Warren Spahn was the greatest left-handed pitcher in baseball history. Henry Aaron was the greatest right-handed batter in baseball history. Joe Adcock hit some superhuman home runs with his bat. With his endurance, Lew Burdette makes today’s pitchers look like sissies. Eddie Mathews belted so many home runs and drove in so many runs for the Miracle Braves. Del Crandall, Johnny Logan, and Billy Bruton all performed at high levels for so many seasons.
The only consolation for us Fondy fans was that, as the Braves faded away, Vince Lombardi returned the Green Bay Packers to their rightful place as true sports legends of the Badger State.
My baseball card collection continued to grow throughout the World Series seasons of the Milwaukee Braves. I stored my prized cards in a large wooden box, arranged in rows so that I could easily find and pick out the card of anyone who played in the majors during the six years covered by my collection. I also had another box of duplicates for trading purposes. My collection took up all the space on the floor of the bedroom closet.
By the time I stopped collecting, I had almost amassed complete sets of player’s cards for each major league team from 1953 through 1958, plus a number of star players from previous years. I possessed at least 3,000 cards. I handled the cards in my collection quite often. Therefore, I’m sure that collectors today would grade them highly. Even so, my baseball card collection would be worth far more than the stamp collection that I have carried around with me all these years.
I graduated from Goodrich High School with the class of 1961 and, though I had quit acquiring baseball cards, my collection still rested on my closet floor. I was leaving home in the fall to attend the University of Wisconsin. My sister was growing up. She was eyeing a room of her own. As our house did not have storage space, I needed to find a new home for the baseball cards—or throw them out. It never occurred to me that, 60 years hence, a collection of nearly every baseball card printed between 1953 and 1958 would be worth more than its weight in gold. To me, it had been nothing other than a teenage hobby. Like stamps. Or bottle caps.
The time had come to find a new location for my stuff. I just couldn’t bring myself to dump the results of my megalomania into a garbage can. Next door to the Ford family on Guindon Boulevard lived a couple of young guys who liked to play baseball. I wasn’t sure if they would appreciate the cards like I did. Would they just clip them to the spokes of their bikes to make a ratcheting sound as they rode down the street? I was in a tough spot. Nonetheless, I braced myself and hauled the cards next door and gave them away—an act of lunacy that I began to regret even before I earned my college degree. Frankly, I am not certain what I would change most if I had the power to live my life over again. 1, Would I keep my baseball cards? Or 2, keep the Braves in Milwaukee? It would be a tough choice.
As a footnote, I did encourage my sons to collect baseball cards during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Not long after they started collecting, it became easier just to buy complete sets. Therefore, they did not learn the bargaining lessons from trading cards. Those cards have been kept safe all these years, though. It is just unfortunate that a lot of the stars of that era have been tarnished with performance-enhancing drugs or other scandals, as their cards are not as sought after as, say, Henry Aaron’s rookie season. Although I never really blamed my mother for forcing me to get rid of my card collection she did harbor a guilty complex about it. She bought me a complete set of the 1953 Topps cards that were reprinted in 1994. It was a nice Christmas gift.
As for the two guys who received the bonanza of my baseball card collection? Well, both of them have passed away, so I must consider myself fortunate to still be on this Earth. But the obituary for the younger of the two brothers does mention that he was an avid collector of baseball cards. So at least I was able to pass on my passion to someone else. There is little else that we can do in this world that is of greater value than to bequeath to a new generation our enthusiasm for life’s small pleasures.
Interestingly, professional baseball and my card collection displayed just the sort of social democracy that the United States was becoming in the 1950s. There were Latin Americans and African Americans, and even Native Americans participating. They were mixed with players whose ancestors had emigrated from Eastern Europe, Germany, France, Italy, and England. And now we have great prospects from Japan and Korea. What could be more American than professional baseball players!?