Baseball gone wild in Milwaukee

OK, OK, I admit to being a longtime Braves fan thanks to my dad being a native of Milwaukee and distant memories of attending games in the early 1960’s as a child. And yes, I did follow the Brewers especially in the Yount years. But until the 1990’s and the rise of Glavine, Maddox, and Smoltz, the glory days were those early years in Milwaukee. With Bushville Klima has done a wonderfully entertaining book about those days with a focus on the players such as Eddie Matthews, Warren Spahn and Henry Aaron. He covers how and why they moved from Boston to Milwaukee, the reception the team received not only in Wisconsin but in the entire Midwest, as well as the general scorn felt by the east coast teams as represented by the New York Yankees and most of the media. What is additionally interesting is his focus on how this move transformed baseball in general, and how many things about the game of baseball Boston Brave owner Lou Perini envisioned back then have become basic facets of today’s game.