Haven't won a pennant in 26 years, and they seem beset by issues which prevent the club from moving forward. Milwaukee is still the smallest market in the major leagues, and for those who follow such things we are reminded that some things never change. The sheer humanness of the experiences that Mickey Tussler endures will endear him to readers, but the impression left by Nappi's telling of this tale haunts us as we are reminded of our own failings and weaknesses.
It is not a light tale of "local boy done good" or "youngster overcomes adversity" but rather a deeply complex retelling of a long list of set-backs endured by the underdog, the overlooked, the diamond in the rough. A young farm boy with mental and emotional issues strikes out on his own and becomes adored by the fans at Borchert Field, adored for his abilities on the ball field. As a Milwaukee resident for 15 years I got a sense of what the city once was, and in that time I became fascinated by the old Brewers, a team that defined the term "small market." In those days, a crowd of 10,000 was a sell-out at the ancient little baseball barn on Milwaukee's North Side.īaseball aside, the story Nappi reveals is a remarkable one. Growing up in southern Wisconsin, I missed the Brewers by a few years. In the pages of "The Legend of Mickey Tussler," as Nappi has a knack for capturing baseball culture. Weaving Milwaukee baseball culture into a web of diamond story telling, Nappi writes with as much grit and stamina as the flannel-clad, salty-tongued players would have played on the diamonds of yore. So, it should come as no surprise that this storied club, dead now for some 50-odd years, should serve as the springboard for a novelist named Frank Nappi and his book, "The Legend of Mickey Tussler," out now in hardcover from St. As the inhabitants of Borchert Field moved on they became steeped in the lore of human imagination, providing a fertile mixture for growing new dreams. Fifty-one seasons worth of baseball, a half-century's worth of baseball lore.ĭreams were cultivated at such places around America during the first half of the 20th century, as were the stories which sprang from the dream-getting. the old Milwaukee Brewers, that is, the American Association Brewers, a feisty little baseball team which inhabited a ramshackle all-wooden ballpark at 8th and Chambers Streets from 1902 to 1952, a neighborhood baseball theater called Borchert Field. Most Milwaukeeans aren't familiar with the Milwaukee Brewers.
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