Great Piece of Baseball and Wisconsin history. 17" long original Milwaukee Count Seat Slat.
Brief History
With its dull gray exterior, cramped concourses and obstructed-view seats, Milwaukee County Stadium is an old park without an old park’s character. It opened on April 6, 1953, for an exhibition game between the Milwaukee Braves and the Boston Red Sox. It held only 36,011 fans at the time, and only 28,111 of them sat in permanent seats. That changed after only one year, and the bleacher configuration and size have changed several times since. In 1982, those bleachers were filled for the stadium’s first World Series in 25 years when the Brewers hosted the Cardinals. The Braves hosted the Yankess here in both the 1957 and 1958 World Series.
In 1994, the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers announced that they were leaving the stadium, where they had played two or three regular-season games each year since 1953. The Brewers are to move into a new retractable roof stadium being constructed in the center field parking lot by March 2001. The last Brewers game will be played in County Stadium on September 28, 2000. The last time the Braves will play at the ballpark is May 27, 2000.
County Stadium Trivia:
• Stadium sits on site of former Story Quarry.
• Surveyor’s mark on right-field foul pole: "315.37."
• From 1953 to 1973 (before the park was expanded) hospital patients at the National Soldiers Home V.A. Hospital sat outside their rooms on Mockingbird Hill overlooking right field and watched the games for free.
• Perini’s Woods, a grove of spruce and fir trees behind the center-field fence, were planted in 1954 and replaced by bleachers in 1961.
• Braves Reservation, a picnic area down the left-field line, was inaugurated in 1961.
• Bernie Brewer slides into a huge beer stein in right-center whenever a Brewer hits a homer.
• Cecil Fielder is the only player ever to hit a homer completely out of the park during a game.
• Scene of Midwest League minor league game on August 27, 1966, between Fox Cities and Wisconsin Rapids.
• Braves hosted both the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals on September 24, 1954. The first game was the continuation of a game played two days earlier, the conclusion of which on a disputed double play was successfully protested by the Reds. The Reds tied the game after the protested contest’s resumption, but the Braves won, 4-3, in the bottom of the ninth, and then went on to beat the Cardinals, 4-2.
• The Chicago White Sox played here for nine games in 1968 and 11 games in 1969.
