Opening Day in Milwaukee

Opening day in Milwaukee is an event like no other in baseball—all the pomp and reverence for the return of the season, with a tailgate party like only Brewers fans know how to throw. Each opener creates treasured memories, like Hank Aaron’s return to Milwaukee, Sixto Lezcano’s walk-off grand slam, the momentous opening of Miller Park, Lorenzo Cain’s game-saving grab or the debuts of a couple of kids named Yount and Molitor. Chronicling a half-century of baseball lore, this book relives 53 home openers and the traditions, oddball characters, unlikely heroes and Hall of Fame legends they featured.

Matthew J. Prigge is a librarian and freelance writer from Milwaukee. He is a regular contributor to Milwaukee Magazine. This is his fifth book.

Matthew J. Prigge
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 269
Bibliographic Info: 41 photos, appendix, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2023
pISBN: 978-1-4766-8964-7
eISBN: 978-1-4766-4863-7
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
Chapter One. The Seventies 5
Chapter Two. The Eighties 49
Chapter Three. The Nineties 92
Chapter Four. The Aughts 135
Chapter Five. The Teens 175
Chapter Six. The Twenties 216
Appendix: The Opening Day All-Timers 231
Chapter Notes 233
Bibliography 255
Index 257

• “Like a baseball tucked snugly in the palm of a glove, this book is a perfect fit for any true blue fan of the Brew Crew. Matthew Prigge’s Opening Day in Milwaukee is an entertaining, insightful, and sentimental history of the Brewers. As someone born in late February 1970, just weeks before the team’s first home opener, I found myself reliving the different stages of my own life as I turned the pages. So much has changed over the last half-century, but the Brewers have been a constant source of joy for so many of us. Every year comes another opening day, another fresh start, another connection to the past and to the future, and another reason to hope – on and off the diamond.”—Andrew Maraniss, New York Times best-selling author of Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South

• “Opening Day in Milwaukee is a neat way to tell the history of a baseball team, one special game at a time. I’m not a Brewers fan, but that didn’t stop me from having more fun than Bernie Brewer sliding into a vat of beer!”—Jeff Katz, author Split Season:1981 and former Mayor of Cooperstown.