County Stadium (Milwaukee)

[alpineinc]

..........

[DrBear]

I've been lurking here a while and finally got this far. I've ejoyed the pics so much, I had to add one of my own here...County Stadium August 1970. Note the house trailer above the scoreboard. That was the ORIGINAL Bernie Brewer, a 66-year-old retired stuntman named Milt Mason, who moved up there early in the season and vowed to stay until the team had a sellout (its first season, when it had only a week to sell tickets before the opening game and no time to sell season tickets). He was stuck there until September, and when they finally drew 40,000, everybody agreed enough was enough. He slid down a rope in front of the scoreboard.

[six4three]

Cool shot - thanks!

[Greg B.]

I really enjoyed those pictures; thanks to all who posted. I have only visited Milwaukee once in my life, in the summer of '94, and the Brewers were out of town, so I only got as close to the stadium as driving past it on the Interstate. But looking at the shots of it from the inside, it strikes me as being almost exactly as how a ballpark ought to look. Sunny, airy, open. I am no engineer, nor do I know much about the condition of the place, but one wonders what it would have taken to update it and get rid of the posts and generally bring the old girl up to today's standards. Certainly looking at the overdone colossus of Miller Park looming in the outfied makes one long for the days when County Stadium was in its prime.

[DrBear]

A few more notes on this thread, admittedly based on memory and having gone to Brewers games since that first year...

I remember the warmup mounds at County Stadium in 1970, but not after that year...I think everybody just forgot they were there, and after the catchers complained they were taken out...

The "suburban neighborhood" is the Story Parkway area, and it is a very nice and somewhat upscale place to live. They get a bit of traffic on game days but not as much now that Miller Park is there, a bit further away than County Stadium. Incidentally, County Stadium was built in Story Quarry.

County was just big enough to get a football field in (I used to cover Packer games there). The white border around the field bumped into the fences and the railing down the third base line. The press box was awful tho - only two levels plus the camera bucket below, so it stretched on forever.

The "orange replay" scoreboard was built in 1980 and was state of the art for about a month - until Dodger Stadium put up the first Diamond Vision board. Worse, the Brewers went with a Swiss company, Omega, which then went out of the scoreboard business so they had trouble getting replacement parts.

When the Bucks came into Milwaukee in the late 60s, there was talk of a new arena that would share the County Stadium parking, probably built where Miller Park is now. But that never happened. And there was no new arena until the Bradley Center was built.

As for whether County could have been upgraded - of course it could. But the Seligs didn't want that. They fought for years to get a new ballpark. Early drawings showed something like CitiField - an Ebbets-style ballpark. Then it became a retractable roof park. It's probably needed in Milwaukee because the team draws from all over the state (and occasionally from Chicago). But the mezzanine area was basically just covered folding chairs with shelves; hardly the type of luxury boxes that would get big money. And that's what the Brewers wanted. If you just wanted a ballpark, there were no problems. If you want a money machine, you needed a whole new park.

[Pelt]

[brewers96]

Here's a few that I found:

In this one, the dirt area in the bottom-right corner is where Miller Park would be built--http://www.ballparks.com/baseball/national/county02.jpg

County Stadium Demolition Photos-- http://www.millerparkscrapbook.org/p...demolition.htm

County Stadium (Left) and Miller Park (Right)--http://www2.jsonline.com/sports/brew...ge/sky0113.jpg

County Stadium during/afer demolition--http://www2.jsonline.com/sports/brew...ystadium22.jpg

The Final Game--http://www2.jsonline.com/sports/brew...allery0928.asp

[pudgie_child]

Can anybody here post photos of the models of the retractable roof proposals?

The radial roof eventually used in Miller Park was one of at least three proposals that were published. One firm (HOK?) proposed a linear design similar to Safeco Field (but with the roof panels stored in straight-away center-field), and the other design used steel cables to support a retractable roof similar in design to the roof at Lucas Oil Stadium. I'm not a huge fan of the Miller Park's problematic roof, but it probably was the best proposal in front of the Brewers at the time.

Anyhow, I think I once saw the model photos in "Down In The Valley," but I haven't been able to find them anywhere online.

[six4three]

Here are a couple photos of the various proposals.

First, the original plan:

[six4three]

These plans were scanned from newspaper accounts at the time. There were a couple models made, of different roof configurations.

First, an arched roof:

[six4three]

A tent roof:

[six4three]

And finally, the preliminary version of the design the team elected to develop - a fan roof:

[brewers96]

Here are a couple photos of the various proposals.

First, the original plan:

I like that one.

[Pelt]

And finally, the preliminary version of the design the team elected to develop - a fan roof:

I find that one to be more interesting than the one they ended up with.

[pudgie_child]

Thanks a lot for posting those images. The photos of the models were reproduced in the book about County Stadium, but the graphics from the JS are new to me.