The City of Milwaukee has always been the center of your universe and, although you now know of cities that are bigger, more historic and more glamorous, Milwaukee is still home and that has always trumped everything else. You also know that people outside of Milwaukee don’t always have a whole lot of respect for your town and that gives you fits. When your cousins from California visited two summers ago and asked if you had ever heard of the Beatles, you realized that their image of Milwaukee was that of a small, backward community populated exclusively by hayseeds and rubes. You love your cousins, but you felt you had to corrected that perception, and in no uncertain terms! You’ll find this story funny someday, but you’ll always find it infuriating as well, because you know the real Milwaukee. And you love her.

But now the Braves have decided to pull up stakes and move to Atlanta, and that hurt. Yes, football is still your favorite sport, and well on its way to eclipsing baseball and becoming America’s favorite as well. Plus, with the Green Bay Packers becoming a nearly unbeatable force here in the ‘60s, it had become easy to overlook the Braves. But now they’re gone. County Stadium sits abandoned like something in a ghost town, and Milwaukee’s once proud claim to the title: “Big League City” now belongs only to the ghosts. The whole thing is devastating, isn’t it? And I know that what makes it all the worse for you is that it took the Braves’ departure to remind you how much you actually love the game of baseball. You’ve tried to fool yourself into thinking you didn’t, but that’s only because you’ve never been able to play the game with anything resembling competence. I mean, let’s face it kiddo, this simply isn’t your game! Nevertheless, you have always seen the beauty in the game, the logic of it, and yes…the romance.

Baseball seems magical in ways football and the other sports simply do not. It is baseball each year that finally chases away the long and brutal winter. Radio broadcasts of the games fill the lazy summer air like birdsong—becoming the background music of your life. When each new season’s trading cards arrived, you raced to be the first to buy a pack, savor the brittle (but somehow delicious) bubble gum, and breathlessly file through the cards looking for that white block “M” on the navy blue cap with the red bill. The baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint; an epic saga told in box scores and league standings. And baseball’s historical roster reads like something out of mythology: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Dizzy Dean, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Cool Papa Bell.

The other day you overheard Dad and some of the other guys in the neighborhood sharing their memories of baseball in Milwaukee and were surprised to learn that your town has had a long and colorful relationship with the game of baseball; and that it began long before the Braves arrived from Boston. Some of the guys talked about a place called Borchert Field. From their description Borchert was a ramshackle wooden ballpark, built in the 1800s and shoehorned into a neighborhood on Milwaukee’s near north side. It was the home stadium for a minor league team known as the Milwaukee Brewers, and a Negro League team called the Milwaukee Bears. Those mythic heroes I mentioned earlier? Each and every one actually played at Milwaukee’s Borchert Field. That’s right, even the Babe!

Borchert was demolished after County Stadium was built and the Braves came to town. But while it existed it was one of the most colorful ballparks in the history of the game. One day you’ll do some research of your own and learn all about Borchert Field, and the stories will make the place sound like a kind of baseball funhouse. In the meantime ask Dad. Ask Grandpa. Ask your uncles. They’ll tell you. Eventually—although you never even saw the place—you’ll feel as if you personally experienced all of its most glorious moments.

In the end you will also feel different about your city. It will always be home, and you’ll always love it, but the loss of the Braves will finally allow you to love Milwaukee warts and all, as they say. Hearing about Borchert Field has helped you see that Milwaukee was still Milwaukee even before the Braves came to town. And you’ll see that a city doesn’t need a major league ballclub to be a major league community.

So dream about old Borchert Field. Imagine riding a succession of streetcars on game day to get there. Imagine buying your ticket and settling into your seat. And imagine rooting for a team that unapologetically named itself for the city’s beer makers. The Milwaukee Brewers. Imagine that.

Ballpark (Field of Dreams)    1990     John T. McCarthy, Jr.     8-color silkscreen