The Brewers began their existence as the Seattle Pilots in 1969 as an expansion team in the American League, West Division and played in Sick’s Stadium, which was the original home to the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League. The Pilots were never able to put a successful team on the field but the franchise also suffered from a very small ball park that by opening day of 1969 was supposed to expand to 30,000 seats, which never happened. By the end of their first season, the team finished with a 64-98 record, last the new AL West. Six days before opening day of the following season, MLB agreed to allow the team to be sold and moved to Milwaukee where they would be renamed the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Milwaukee Brewers played at Milwaukee County Stadium and the 1970 season proved to be only 1-game better than their debut as the Pilots but in 1974, Team Owner Bud Selig arranged a trade for Hank Aaron to return to baseball in Milwaukee. By 1977, the team had such stars as Robin Yount, Jim Gantner, Gorman Thomas, Don Money and Cecil Cooper. At the start of the 1978 season winning 93 games and finishing six and a half games out of first place. Finally in 1982, the Brewers won the American League pennant and faced the St. Louis Cardinals. The Brewers came out firing winning the first game of the series 10-0 but had problems with pitching as Rollie Fingers had been injured prior to the playoffs. The Cardinals won the series and the Title 4-3.
The team went up for sale in 2004 and the team was sold to Mark Attanasio in January of 2005 and that same season the team posted their first non-losing record (81-81) since 1992 and had stars such as Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, Corey Hart and J.J. Hardy.
The team came back to life in 2007 when baseball guru’s predicted that the Brewers were a “sleeper team” and ended up with a winning 83-79 record. In that remarkable season, Prince Fielder became the youngest player to ever reach the 50-home run mark in a single season but it would be the following season that the Brewers completed the turnaround and ended the 26-year playoff drought. The team would post a 90-72 record and faced off against the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS losing the series 4-1.
Since 2008, the Brewers have gone through another mini-drought and have yet to make the playoffs again. After the 2010 season, the Brewers declined to renew the contract for Manager Ken Macha and hired on Ron Roenicke as the team’s new manager.
Buy Brewers Tickets and be a part of it all!
|