November 10, 1975: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

November 10, 1975, 50 years ago: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in a storm in Lake Superior, between the American State of Wisconsin and the Canadian Province of Ontario, with 29 men aboard. There were no survivors.

A year later, Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot would have a hit song about the ship, reaching Number 2 on the U.S. music charts.

Lightfoot described the way the wind whipped up the Great Lakes as "the Witch of November come stealing." And there was recent precedent: On November 29, 1966, 9 years to the month earlier, the freighter SS Daniel J. Morrell, named for a Pennsylvania Congressman, sank in Lake Huron, taking with it 28 of its 29 crewmen. The sole survivor was named Dennis Hale.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald, known as "the Eddie Fitz" or "the Big Fitz" was launched in 1958. As Lightfoot said, "As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most." In fact, at the time of its launch, it was the largest ship of any kind sailing the Great Lakes: From west to east, Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

(Mark Russell, a native of Buffalo, New York, between Erie and Ontario, and a comedian whose specialty was politics, once commented on a bill before Congress to declare Lake Champlain, between New York, Vermont and Quebec, "the 6th Great Lake": "It is not a Great Lake. It's a pretty good lake, but it's not a great lake." He had a point: It is considerably smaller, with considerably less commercial traffic.)

The ship was owned by the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, and named for its president. Its home port was Milwaukee. There, on June 8, 1958, it was launched. It took Edmund’s wife Elizabeth 3 tries to break the champagne bottle at its christening. A delay of 36 minutes followed, while the shipyard crew struggled to release the keel blocks. Upon sideways launch, the ship created a large wave that "doused" the spectators and then crashed into a pier before righting herself. One man watching the launching had a heart attack and later died. Maybe all of this was a bad sign.

The ship regularly went to Duluth, Minnesota, where it would pick up deliveries of taconite iron ore from nearby mines in Minnesota's "Iron Range," and taking them to Great Lakes port cities, including Detroit, Toledo and Cleveland. She set seasonal haul records six different times.

On November 9, 1975, at 2:15 PM Central Standard Time, commanded by Captain Ernest McSorley -- as Lightfoot sang, "with a crew and good captain, well-seasoned" -- it left Superior, Wisconsin on its last voyage of the calendar year, due to arrive at Zug Island, off the coast of Detroit. (Lightfoot, either mistakenly or on purpose because it made for a better rhyme, said, "they left fully loaded for Cleveland.")

It would have to be the last voyage of the year, because it was getting colder, and a storm on any of the Great Lakes could be as bad as one on an ocean. As Lightfoot sang, such storms were known among the freighters' crews as "the Gales of November" and "the Witch of November."

The Edmund Fitzgerald traveled Lake Superior at a top speed of 16 miles per hour. At 1:00 AM on November 10, the ship's radio reported winds of 52 knots (60 miles per hour), and waves 10 feet high. At 2:00 AM, they received a report from the National Weather Service, upgrading their official warning from gale to storm. The ship kept going through the night, and the next morning. At 2:45 in the afternoon, it began to snow.

Another freighter crossing Lake Superior, the Arthur M. Anderson, had been in contact with them much of the way, and were even within visual contact until the storm and the fog got to be too much. At 3:30 PM, McSorley radioed the Anderson, reporting to Captain Bernie Cooper that the Fitzgerald was taking on water and listing. He chose to slow his ship down, so that the Anderson could catch up, in case a rescue was necessary.

Shortly afterward, the U.S. Coast Guard warned all shipping that the Soo Locks, between the city of Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario and the city of the same name on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, were closed, and safe anchorage should be sought.

At 4:10, McSorley called the Anderson again: The Fitzgerald's radar had failed, so they were effectively blind. The Anderson would have to get close, and use their radar to act as the Fitzgerald's "eyes." Cooper told McSorley head for Whitefish Bay, Ontario. McSorley learned that the lighthouse at Whitefish Point was on, but not its radio beacon.

At 6:00, both ships were reporting winds of 58 knots (67 MPH), with gusts up to 75 knots (86 MPH -- hurricane force, by definition, is 75 MPH). Waves were regularly as high as 25 feet, and some as high as 35 feet.

At 7:10, the Anderson received a message from McSorley, saying, "We are holding our own." It seemed to be a message of confidence, unlike in the song. But it would be the Fitzgerald's last received message. There was never a distress signal. The Anderson lost both radio and radar contact. At 7:39, after nearly half an hour of trying to reach McSorley, Cooper called the Coast Guard station at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on Channel 16, the distress channel -- not for his ship, but for the Fitzgerald.

There weren't sufficient search-and-rescue vessels to look for the Fitzgerald. At 9:00, the Coast Guard advised Cooper to turn around and look for survivors. At 10:30, the Coast Guard asked all commercial vessels in or near Whitefish Bay to assist. Although no other vessels were lost in the rescue attempt, it would take until November 14 to find the Fitzgerald, its hull broken in two and sitting on the bottom of the lake.

The Mariners' Church in Detroit -- in the song, Lightfoot called it "the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral" -- held a memorial service, ringing its bell 29 times, once for each life lost. From 1976 to 2005, it held a memorial every November 10. Starting in 2006, it broadened the annual ceremony, to commemorate all lives lost on the Great Lakes.

Lightfoot had also called the Church "a musty old hall." Due to complaints, he changed the lyric to "a rustic old hall" in his live performances. The native of Orillia, Ontario, a few miles inland from Lake Huron, died on May 1, 2023, at the age of 84.

The 29 men: Ernest McSorley, Captain, at the age of 63 the oldest man on board; John McCarthy, first mate, 62; James Pratt, second mate, 44; Michael Armagost, third mate, 37; George Holl, chief engineer, 60; Edward Bindon, 1st assistant engineer, 47; Thomas Edwards, assistant engineer, 50; Oliver Champeau, assistant engineer, 41; Russell Haskell, assistant engineer, 40; Ralph Walter, oiler, 58; Blaine Wilhelm, oiler, 52; Thomas Bentsen, oiler, 23; John Simmons, senior wheelman, 62; John Poviach, wheelman, 59; Eugene O'Brien, wheelman, 50; William Spengler, watchman, 59; Ransom Cundy, watchman, 53; Karl Peckol, watchman, at 20 the youngest man on board; Paul Riippa, deckhand, 22; Bruce Hudson, deckhand, 22; Mark Thomas, deckhand, 21; Gordon MacLellan, wiper, 30; Joseph Mazes, special maintenance man, 59; Thomas Borgeson, maintenance man, 41; Robert Rafferty, steward, 62; Allen Kalmon, second steward, 43; Frederick Beetcher, porter, 56; Nolan Church, porter, 55; and David Weiss, cadet, 22.

As Lightfoot sang, "And all that remains are the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters."

Lightfoot died on May 1, 2023.

October 26, 1825: The Erie Canal Opens

October 26, 1825, 200 years ago: The Erie Canal opens, connecting Buffalo on the Niagara River with Albany on the Hudson River, and thus connecting the Great Lakes to New York City. It has been called America's first superhighway.

It means that no longer must goods be delivered over land, through the Appalachian Mountains that separate what's now known as the Northeastern U.S. and the Midwestern U.S. It cut delivery time by several days.

This goes on to make the City of New York the biggest and richest City in the country, and (at least, for the rest of the 19th Century) the State of New York the biggest and richest State in the country. It also enriches Great Lakes cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. It also makes the sports teams eventually founded in those cities commercially viable.

A canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The State legislature authorized construction in 1817. Political opponents of the canal, referencing its lead supporter, Governor DeWitt Clinton, denigrated the project as "Clinton's Folly" and "Clinton's Big Ditch." But the canal saw quick success upon opening on October 26, 1825, with toll revenue covering the State's construction debt within the 1st year of operation.

DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt Clinton was born on March 2, 1769 in what is now New Windsor, Orange County, about 65 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, He served as secretary to his uncle, Governor George Clinton, who became the longest-serving Governor of any State in the Union to this day, and would serve as Vice President in the 2nd term of Thomas Jefferson and the 1st term of James Madison.

He appointed DeWitt to head the Council of Appointments. Under the law of the time, this allowed him to control patronage in the State, including allowing him to appoint the Mayor of New York City and County Sheriffs, as these were not elective offices at the time. He used this position to stall the political career of the man who preceded his uncle as Vice President, Aaron Burr, who wanted to succeed Uncle George as Governor.

DeWitt Clinton served in both houses of the State legislature, and for nearly 2 years in the U.S. Senate. He served as Mayor from 1803 (appointing himself) until 1807, and again from 1808 to 1810. He was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1810, on the ticket of Daniel Tompkins. When Tompkins was elected Vice President under Madison in 1812 -- because Uncle George had died in office, the 1st Vice President to do so -- DeWitt became Governor, despite having been nominated by the Federalist Party for President, and having lost that election to Madison. As Governor, he pushed the Canal through the legislature. He served through 1822, and was elected again in 1824. He died in office on February 11, 1828.

At the time, the 363-mile length made the canal was the 2nd-longest in the world, after the Grand Canal in Chia. Initially 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep, it was expanded several times, most notably from 1905 to 1918, when the "Barge Canal" was built, and over half the original route was abandoned. The modern Barge Canal measures 351 miles long, 120 feet wide, and 12 feet deep. It has 34 locks, including the Waterford Flight, the steepest locks in the United States.

The Erie Canal's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. It continued to be competitive with railroads, including the New York Central Railroad and the Boston & Albany Railroad, until about 1902, when tolls were abolished. Commercial traffic declined heavily in the latter half of the 20th Century due to competition from trucking and the 1959 opening of the larger St. Lawrence Seaway. The canal's last regularly scheduled hauler, the Day Peckinpaugh, ended service in 1994.

Today, the Erie Canal is mainly used by recreational watercraft. It has also become a tourist attraction in its own right, as several parks and museums are dedicated to its history.

How to Be a New York Football Fan In Cleveland -- 2022 Edition

This coming Sunday, the New York Jets travel to FirstEnergy Stadium to play the Cleveland Browns.

The successes of the Cavaliers (an NBA Championship and 4 other trips to the Finals since 2007) and the Indians/Guardians (including 3 Pennants and 7 Division titles since 1995, and likely another this season) have not rubbed off on what is, historically, the most successful Northern Ohio team.

The Browns have 29 Playoff appearances, but only 1 since 2002; 13 Division titles, but none since 1989; 17 Conference Championship Game appearances, but, again, none since 1989; 15 trips to their league's championship game, but none since 1969; and 8 league titles, 4 of them in the NFL, but none since 1964.

Before You Go. You've no doubt heard the legends of wind blasting off Lake Erie and "lake-effect snow." Well, this will be mid-September, so cold won't be an issue, although wind could be.

Cleveland.com, the website connected with the city's main newspaper, The Plain Dealer, is predicting temperatures in the low 80s by day, the high 60s by night. No rain is predicted.

Cleveland is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to change your timepieces.

Tickets. In 2019, the last pre-COVID season, the Browns averaged 67,431 fans per home game, a sellout. Tickets may be hard to get.

Browns tickets used to be among the cheapest in the NFL. Not this season: Seats in the lower level, the 100 sections, are $389 along the sidelines, and $165 in the end zones. Seats in the middle level, the 300 sections, are $395 and $136. Seats in the upper level, the 500 sections, are $107, with no end-zone seats.

Do not order tickets in the 1st 2 levels of the east end zone. That's the Dawg Pound. You will be surrounded by, dare I say it, rabid Browns fans.

Getting There. Cleveland is 500 land miles from New York. Well, not quite: Specifically, it is 465 miles from Times Square to Public Square; and 459 miles from MetLife Stadium to FirstEnergy Stadium. Knowing this, your first reaction is going to be to fly out there.

This may be a good idea if you can afford it: Like New York, Boston and Chicago, but unlike most of the American League cities, Cleveland has good rapid transit from the airport to downtown. In fact, with the extension of the RTA Rapid Transit's Red Line in 1968, Cleveland became the 1st city in the Western Hemisphere to have rapid transit direct from downtown to its major airport.

But it's going to be expensive: A a nonstop flight would be a round-trip fare of a little under $1,100. You could get a flight for under $900, but you'd need to change planes at Dulles outside Washington. The heck with that!

Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, named for William R. Hopkins, a City Manager in the 1920s and an early pilot, is about 12 miles southwest of downtown, and the Red Line takes 24 minutes, 9 stops, to get from Hopkins to Tower City.

Train? Bad idea. Not because of the price, just $219 round-trip -- cheaper than Greyhound, for once -- but because of the schedule. Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited (formerly known as the Twentieth Century Limited when the old New York Central Railroad ran it from Grand Central Terminal to Chicago's LaSalle Street Station) leaves New York's Penn Station at 3:40 every afternoon, and arrives at Cleveland's Lakefront Station at 3:53 in the morning. In reverse, the train leaves Lakefront Station at 5:50 AM and arrives back at Penn Station at 6:42 PM. Time-wise, this is incredibly inconvenient.

And, unlike the Cleveland Union Terminal, now known as Tower City Center but hasn't had long-distance passenger rail traffic since 1977, Lakefront Station, at 200 Cleveland Memorial Shoreway, is not exactly one of the great rail terminals of this country. To make matters worse, while the RTA Green Line and Blue Line both serve Lakefront Station, the RTA doesn't run overnight, and thus any Amtrak train that comes into the station will not be serviced by it.

How about Greyhound? There are 5 buses leaving Port Authority every day with connections to Cleveland, but only 1 of these are nonstop: The rest require you to change buses in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, or in 1 case, Cambridge, Ohio. The ride, including the changeover, takes about 13 hours. Round-trip fare is $338, although it can be as little as $198 with advanced purchase.

The terminal, at 1465 Chester Avenue, adjacent to the Cleveland State University campus east of downtown, was a hideously filthy hole on my first visit in 1999, but apparently they got the message and cleaned it up, and it's tolerable again. At least on the inside; on the outside, it's a magnet for panhandlers. It's a 7-block walk from the terminal to Public Square, but it's better to take a cab, or to walk 3 blocks to the corner of 13th Street & Superior Avenue and take the Number 3 bus in.

If you decide to drive, the directions are rather simple, down to (almost literally) the last mile. You'll need to get into New Jersey, and take Interstate 80 West. You'll be on I-80 for the vast majority of the trip, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Ohio, in the western suburbs of Cleveland, I-80 will merge with Interstate 90. I point this out merely to help you avoid confusion, not because I-90 will become important. You'll take I-80's Exit 173, and get onto Interstate 77 North. Take Exit 163 toward E. 9th St. This will take you into downtown. If you're driving, I would definitely recommend getting a hotel, and there are several downtown, including some near the ballpark.

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and a half in New Jersey, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Pennsylvania, and a little over an hour in Ohio. Counting rest stops, preferably at either end of Pennsylvania, and accounting for traffic in both New York and Cleveland, it should be no more than 10 hours.

Once In the City. Cleveland, which once had a city population of over 900,000, but is now under 400,000 with a metro area population of 3.6 million, was founded in 1796 by Moses Cleaveland, a hero of the War of the American Revolution, a General in the Connecticut militia, and a shareholder in the Connecticut Land Company. When the Northwest Ordinance was passed in 1787, a lot of New Englanders moved to what's now the Great Lakes States, and many "original" Ohio families can trace their roots back to Connecticut and Moses' expedition to what was known as the Western Reserve.

Supposedly, the reason for the difference in spelling is that, in 1830, the city's 1st newspaper was established, but the editor found "Cleaveland Advertiser" was too long to fit on the incorporation form, so he dropped an A.

The city doesn't really have a highway "beltway" as we understand that term. It is centered on Public Square, at the intersection of Ontario Street and Superior Avenue (U.S. Route 6), with Euclid Avenue (U.S. Route 20) flowing into it. The Terminal Tower, a 708-foot Art Deco masterpiece, is at the southwest corner of Public Square, and includes the Tower City rail hub and shopping mall. It opened in 1930 and, until 1964, was the tallest building in North America outside New York.

At the southeast corner is the Soldiers & Sailors Monument, probably the best memorial to the American Civil War outside of that war's preserved battlefields. And at the northeast corner is the Key Tower, at 948 feet now the tallest building in the State of Ohio; Richard Jacobs, who owned the Indians for a time, also owned the real estate development company that built the Key Tower (named for Key Bank) in 1991.

Cuyahoga County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument,

at Public Square

The sales tax in Ohio is 5.75 percent, and in Cuyahoga County (which includes Cleveland), it's 8 percent. ZIP Codes in Cleveland begin with the digits 441, and the Area Code is 216. Cleveland is one of the cities that had a major race riot -- in their case, on the East Side in 1966 -- which led to "white flight": The city's population was 83 percent white in 1950, but just 33 percent white now, along with 53 percent black, 10 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Asian.

Cleveland had been comparatively free of racial strife until July 18, 1966. But that doesn't mean it was free of crime. In particular, the East Side, centered on the Hough neighborhood, had issues, including with The Seventy-Niner's Café at East 79th Street and Hough Avenue. A confrontation there between police and patrons escalated to the point where, over the next 5 days, 4 people were killed, 50 others were injured, and 275 were arrested.

Two years later, there was another incident on the East Side, what became known as the Glenville Shootout. The police and black nationalists fired at each other on July 23, 1968, and this led to rioting. Between the shootout and the riot, 9 people were killed including 3 policemen, and 16 others were wounded in the shootout.

The Kent State University massacre, about 40 miles southeast of Public Square, on May 4, 1970, was about the Vietnam War, not racial issues. Northern Ohio had no more civil disturbances until October 15, 2005, when neo-Nazis calling themselves the National Socialist Movement demonstrated against black gang activity in Toledo, and got their asses handed to them by a group called Anti-Racist Action.

On November 22, 2014, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy, was carrying a toy gun at the Cudell Recreation Center on Cleveland's West Side, was shot and killed by police. Along with the police killings of Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in the St. Louis area, both earlier in the year, this was one of the sparks of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) runs a heavy rail Red Line, similar to New York's Subway, and light rail Blue and Green Lines. They converge at the Tower City, and all 3 run together from there to East 55th Street. The Blue and Green Lines both start at South Harbor, and run together to Shaker Square before diverging. The fare is $2.25, and is the same for RTA buses.

An RTA train at Tower City

Going In. Built in 1999 on the site of the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and known until 2013 as Cleveland Browns Stadium, FirstEnergy Stadium seats 67,431, down from 73,200 when it opened, and from 86,288 at the old stadium.

The Akron-based energy company also holds naming rights to minor-league ballparks in Lakewood, New Jersey and Reading, Pennsylvania. It's a subsidiary of Ohio Edison, which runs electricity for the Cleveland area, but not the Columbus and Cincinnati areas. Yankee broadcaster Bill White, who grew up in Cleveland, mentioned on the air once that, like Consolidated Edison in New York, "Ohio Ed" sponsored a program to take inner-city kids to Indians games.

The official address is 100 Alfred Lerner Way (formerly Erieside Avenue), named for the 1st owner of the revived Browns franchise. It is across from Lakefront Station, and adjacent to the Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Parking is $21. The West 3rd Street station of the light rail system serves it. The field is aligned northeast-to-southwest, and is natural grass. The Browns have never played a home game on artificial turf.

The stadium has also hosted college games, including "home games" for Ohio State, Bowling Green State and Kent State, and Playoff games for the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA).

It has also hosted U.S. soccer games. The men's team won a friendly 2-0 over Venezuela on May 26, 2006; lost a friendly 4-2 to Belgium on May 29, 2013; and won a CONCACAF Gold Cup Group Stage game 3-0 over Nicaragua on July 15, 2017. The women's team has played 3 friendlies there, winning them all: 4-0 over Germany on May 22, 2010; 2-0 over Japan on June 5, 2016; and 2-1 over China on June 12, 2018. It hosted 2 games in the 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup, and will host 2 more in next year's tournament.

In 2017, Thrillist had an article ranking all 31 NFL stadiums. FirstEnergy Stadium only came in 20th: 

Welcome to Cleveland! Titletown USA! Home of Champi... oh, wait. Yeah, they're still the Browns. But, hey, at least the stadium is nice, assuming you aren't too bothered by the words "thirty-five below." Because the stadium was the cornerstone of the Browns' return to Cleveland after they moved to Baltimore and immediately won a Super Bowl, it's pretty nice -- a sight better than the team. Wide concourses, great food, big scoreboards, and all the things that make for a modern NFL palace. Tailgating here is great not only because of the knowledgeable fans, but because the city embraces and encourages it, unlike in other places. And while the surrounding neighborhood doesn't offer much beyond the Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, they still make a great indoor diversion when the bitter cold off Lake Erie renders the stadium uninhabitable.

The Ravens didn't immediately win a Super Bowl after moving. It took them 5 seasons. It wasn't quite a Quebec Nordiques-to-Colorado Avalanche situation. More like a Hartford Whalers-to-Carolina Hurricanes situation (that was 9 years). Of course, the Browns are still looking for their 1st appearance in a world championship game since the 1964 season.

On November 4, 2020, MoneyWise published an article about the worst NFL stadiums, and FirstEnergy Stadium came in 13th -- which is actually an improvement on the Thrillist article: On an accompanying list of best stadiums, it would rise from 20th to 17th. The article praised the atmosphere provided by the fans' enthusiasm, but the big problem remains the literal atmosphere: Being right on the lakefront, it can get really cold.)

The Three Tenors -- Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and José Carreras -- sang at FirstEnergy Stadium on June 25, 2000. (UPDATE: On February 18, 2023, Ohio State and Michigan will renew their rivalry at FirstEnergy Stadium, in college hockey.)

Food. Ohio -- much more than New Jersey and Maryland -- is part of Big Ten Country, where college football tailgate parties are practically a sacrament. Aramark, the successor company to Harry M. Stevens, runs the concessions.

First Down Favorites are behind Sections 104, 121, 504 and 528; B Spot (barbecue) at 115 and 540; Grill Portables at 122, 146 and 344; and Great Lakes Cheesesteaks at 139 and 420.

There was a restaurant called the New York Spaghetti House on East 9th Street, just a few steps from Progressive Field, but it went out of business in 2001. Original owner Mario Brigotti, who died in 1998 at age 99, was a friend of another Italian Clevelander, Mario Boiardi – a.k.a. Chef Boyardee.

Team History Displays. The Browns have won 8 league championships: 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1949 in the All-America Football Conference (every season that league played); and 1950, 1954, 1955 and 1964 in the NFL.

However, they have not won a World Championship since 1964, and have not played an NFL Championship Game, under any name, since 1969 -- which means they have never played in a Super Bowl. The only other teams for which this is true are the Detroit Lions, the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Houston Texans -- and the Jags and Texans are far newer franchises than the Lions and Browns.

Their titles are shown on the facing of the upper deck, and are the only achievements they mention. They do not mention the Division Championships of 1951, 1952, 1953, 1957, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1980, 1985, 1986, 1987 or 1989; or the Wild Card berths of 1958, 1972, 1982, 1988, 1994 and (the only one they've won since their return) 2002.

On the other side of the stadium, the Browns have a Ring of Honor, which includes 18 members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who are identified mainly with the Browns.

In addition, there are 52 other players in a program called Cleveland Browns Legends. Among those still living, they serve as "ambassadors" for the team. To be eligible, a player must have played at least 5 seasons with the Browns, been "a major contributor at their respective positions," and retired from playing professional football for at least 5 years. They are:

* From the 1950 NFL Champions: Ring of Honor: Head coach Paul Brown, quarterback Otto Graham, running back Marion Motley, offensive tackle and placekicker Lou Groza, guard Bill Willis, center Frank Gatski, receivers Dante Lavelli and Mac Speedie, and defensive end Len Ford. Legends: Receiver and Dub Jones (father of later Colts quarterback Bert Jones), guard Abe Gibron, defensive backs Tommy James and Warren Lahr, linebacker Tony Adamle, and end Horace "Big Horse" Gillom.

* From the 1954 and 1955 NFL Champions: Ring of Honor: Paul Brown, Graham, Groza, Lavelli, Ford, Gatski, and offensive tackle Mike McCormack. Guard and linebacker Chuck Noll was also a member of this team, but was elected to the Hall for coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers to 4 Super Bowl wins. Legends: Jones, Gibron, James, Lahr, Gillom; receiver Ray Renfro, defensive tackles Bob Gain and Don Colo, and linebacker Walt Michaels, brother of former Baltimore Colts defensive end Lou Michaels. Walt later coached the Jets to the 1982 AFC Championship Game, and also coached the New Jersey Generals of the USFL.

* Between the 1955 and 1964 titles: Ring of Honor: Receiver Bobby Mitchell, better known for his later tenure with the Washington Redskins. Legends: Offensive tackle Jim Ray Smith.

* From the 1964 NFL Champions: Ring of Honor: Groza, running backs Jim Brown and Leroy Kelly, receiver Paul Warfield (better known for his later tenure with the Miami Dolphins), and guard Gene Hickerson. Legends: Gain, quarterback Frank Ryan, running back Ernie Green, receiver Gary Collins (no relation to the game show host of the same name), guard John Wooten, offensive tackle Dick Schafrath, defensive ends Paul Wiggin and Bill Glass, linebackers Galen Fiss, Vince Costello and Jim Houston, and cornerback Bernie Parrish.

Ryan, now 86 years old and the only living human being to have quarterbacked the Browns to an NFL Championship (Graham died in 2003), is usually referred to as "Dr. Frank Ryan," as he gained a doctorate in mathematics while still an active player. New York Times sports columnist Red Smith wrote, "The Browns' offense consists of a quarterback who understands Einstein's theory of relativity, and ten teammates who don't know that there is one."

* From the teams that advanced to the 1968 and 1969 NFL Championship Games, and the 1971 AFC Central Division Champions: Ring of Honor: No additions. Legends: Quarterback Bill Nelsen, tight end Milt Morin, defensive tackle Walter Johnson (no relation to the baseball legend of the same name), defensive back Erich Barnes, and kicker Don Cockroft.

* From the 1980 AFC Central Champions: Ring of Honor: Tight end Ozzie Newsome, guard Joe DeLamielleure, and linebacker Clay Matthews Jr. Legends: Cockroft, quarterback Brian Sipe, running backs Greg Pruitt and Mike Pruitt, center Tom DeLeone, guard Robert Jackson, offensive tackles Doug Dieken and Cody Risien, defensive tackles Walter Johnson and Jerry Sherk, linebackers Dick Ambrose, and safeties Clarence Scott and Thom Darden.

Matthews is the son of 1950s San Francisco 49ers tackle Clay Matthews Sr., the brother of Houston Oilers Hall of Fame offensive lineman Bruce Matthews, the father of the Green Bay Packers' possible future Hall of Fame linebacker Clay Matthews III and and former Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Casey Matthews; and the uncle of former Tennessee Titans center Kevin Matthews and current Atlanta Falcons offensive tackle Jake Matthews, both sons of Bruce. Clay Sr.'s father, H.L. Matthews, played minor-league baseball, and coached several sports at The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, South Carolina. (Like Jake, Clay Jr. also played for the Falcons.)

The Pruitts are not related, though Greg's wearing of Number 34 and Mike's of 43 helped to confuse this. Greg is also known for wearing a "tearaway" jersey, which he had made famous on the University of Oklahoma team that almost won the 1971 National Championship, but the NFL banned them, and that's known as the Greg Pruitt Rule. Dieken is now a Browns broadcaster.

* From the 1986, 1987 and 1989 teams that won the AFC Central Division, but lost the AFC Championship Game all 3 times: Ring of Honor: Matthews. Legends: Risien, quarterback Bernie Kosar, running backs Earnest Byner and Kevin Mack, receiver Webster Slaughter, defensive tackle Bob Golic (brother of former NFL defensive tackle and ESPN host Mike Golic), linebacker Eddie Johnson, and cornerbacks Hanford Dixon and Frank Minnifield. Running back Eric Metcalf (son of Cardinals running back Terry Dixon) and defensive end Michael Dean Perry (brother of Bears defensive tackle William "the Refrigerator" Perry) arrived in 1989, and were also members of the old Browns' last Playoff team in 1994, and have been added to the Legends.

* From the 21st century: Ring of Honor: So far, none. Legends: Receiver Josh Cribbs, linebacker D'Qwell Jackson.

Graham (14), Jim Brown (32), and Groza (76) have had their uniform numbers retired. So have 2 other players: Running back Ernie Davis (45), the 1st black Heisman Trophy winner, in 1961 with Syracuse University, whose leukemia prevented him from ever playing a down of pro football; and safety Don Fleming (46), who, in those days before players got salaries large enough to not have to take an off-season job, was electrocuted along with a co-worker on a construction site in the Orlando suburb of Winter Park, Florida. Davis died on May 18, 1963; Fleming on June 4, 17 days later.

Jim Brown was recently honored with a statue outside FirstEnergy Stadium. So were Otto Graham, and Al Lerner, the owner who helped bring the Browns back. They honored Paul Brown and Lou Groza with statues at their training facility in suburban Berea, Ohio.

Jim and his wife Monique Brown at the unveiling

Graham, Motley and Jim Brown were named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary team in 1999. They, Groza and Warfield were named to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999 -- as was an earlier football star of the Cleveland area, Jim Thorpe of the Canton Bulldogs. They and Ozzie Newsome were named to the NFL Network's 100 Greatest Players in 2010.

In the TSN 100 poll, Brown ranked Number 1, chosen as the greatest football player ever, ahead of Jerry Rice at Number 2. In the NFL Network 100, Brown ranked Number 2 behind Jerry Rice. Jim Brown, Graham, Motley and Warfield were named to the NFL's 100th Anniversary Team in 2019. So was Doug Atkins, a defensive end who played just 2 seasons for them before Paul Brown traded him to the Chicago Bears, where he built his Hall of Fame credentials. Paul Brown and Bill Belichick (although most of his credentials came later, with the New England Patriots) were named coaches on the 100th Anniversary Team.

The Browns have signed 9 Heisman Trophy winners. Most of them didn't play for them for long, and 1, the aforementioned Ernie Davis, didn't play for them at all. They now have last season's Heisman winner, University of Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield.

The others have been: Les Horvath (1944 Ohio State running back, with the Browns only in 1949), Howard "Hopalong" Cassady (1955 Ohio State running back, 1962), Charles White (1979 USC running back, 1980-84), Vinny Testaverde (1986 Miami quarterback, 1993-95), Rashaan Salaam (1994 Colorado running back, 1999), Ty Detmer (1990 Brigham Young quarterback, 1999-2000), Johnny Manziel (2012 Texas A&M quarterback, 2014-15), and Robert Griffin III (2011 Baylor quarterback, 2016).

There are 32 Browns players in the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame, although some of these are in more for being Cleveland natives who were successful players elsewhere. In chronological order: Chet Adams, Otto Graham, Lou Groza, Dante Lavelli, Cliff Lewis, Marion Motley, Bill Willis, John Yonakor, Tony Adamle, Les Horvath, Jim Martin, Bob Gain, Chuck Noll, Billy Reynolds, Sam Palumbo, Gene Hickerson, Paul Warfield, Ernie Kellerman, Tom Schoen, Doug Dieken, Greg Pruitt, Dick Ambrose, Robert Jackson, Mike Pruitt (no relation to Greg), Tom Cousineau, Bob Golic, Brian Brennan, Kevin Mack, Bubba Baker, Tom Tupa, LeCharles Bentley and Joe Jurevicius; plus coaches Paul Brown and Sam Rutigliano, and team owners Mickey McBride and Al Lerner, making for 36.

The nasty Browns-Steelers rivalry is known as the Turnpike War, since the Pennsylvania and Ohio Turnpikes are used to get between the cities. The Steelers lead, 79-61-1. In the Battle of Ohio with the Cincinnati Bengals, the team founded by Paul Brown after Art Modell fired him, the Bengals lead 51-46. And an artificial rivalry, created when the old Browns became the Baltimore Ravens, is led 34-12 by the Ravens,. There is no trophy given to the winner of any of these rivalries.

Stuff. The Cleveland Browns Pro Shop is located on the Main Concourse, across from Section 112. There, you can get the usual team-themed items. You might even be able to buy an orange Browns hard hat or a rubber dog mask, as seen in the Dawg Pound.

There are several good books about the Browns. When the Browns returned in 1999, Bob Moon published a comprehensive history, The Cleveland Browns: The Great Tradition, and Scott Huler published On Being Brown: What It Means to Be a Cleveland Browns Fan.

Terry Pluto, the Plain Dealer columnist who is the poet laureate of Cleveland sports, wrote Browns Town 1964 and Things I've Learned from Watching the Browns. Jonathan Knight (not the New Kid On The Block) wrote Kardiac Kids: The Story of the 1980 Cleveland Browns and Sundays In the Pound: The Heroics and Heartbreak of the 1985-89 Cleveland Browns. And, in a 2014 book that is now somewhat out of date, Scott Kevin O'Brien wrote Why Is Daddy Sad on Sunday?: A Coloring Book Depicting the Most Disappointing Moments in Cleveland Sports. (The "Daddy" on the cover is wearing a Number 19 Browns jersey, presumably in honor of Bernie Kosar.)

The NFL has released 1964 WORLD CHAMPION CLEVELAND BROWNS: Three Restored Vintage Films on One DVD (season highlights, NFL Championship Game preparations, and the game itself in color); The History of the Cleveland Browns in 2008 (so far, not much reason for an update), and Cleveland Browns: NFL Greatest Games (featuring entire network broadcasts of a 1980 win over Green Bay known as the Dave Logan Game, a 1989 51-0 season-opener over Pittsburgh, and  2002 win over Atlanta that clinched what's still the only Playoff berth of the reborn Browns).

During the Game. According to a 2015 Thrillist article on the NFL's Most Obnoxious Fans, the Browns ranked 25th -- in the bottom quarter, among the least obnoxious. But that only applies when they're not facing a fellow AFC Northern Division team:

You know all those jokes people make about Ohio? You ARE those jokes. And it's hard to be bothered by a group of people dedicated to an awful franchise that, three years after moving and changing their name to the Ravens, somehow managed to win a Super Bowl. Sure, you might toss the occasional dog biscuit/snowball/glass bottle on the field, but you're America's lovable losers -- just incredibly delusional. You really thought [Charlie Frye, Brady Quinn, Seneca Wallace, Trent Dilfer, Tim Couch, Jake Delhomme, Brian Hoyer, Colt McCoy, Derek Anderson, Ken Dorsey] were legitimate starting quarterbacks?

From September 1 to 7, 2017, early in the NFL National Anthem protest controversy, FiveThirtyEight.com polled fans of the 32 NFL teams, to see where they leaned politically. Browns fans were found to be 4.8 percent more liberal than conservative, about right in the middle of the NFL.

Cleveland fans really hate the cross-State Cincinnati Bengals (254 miles away); they really, really hate the former Browns, now the Baltimore Ravens (375 miles); and they really, really really hate the closest NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers (135 miles). Oddly, despite the closeness (171 miles) and a historical rivalry (the 1952, '53, '54 and '57 NFL Championship Games), they don't particularly hate the Detroit Lions; and, despite the closeness (183 miles), they don't particularly hate the Buffalo Bills. I guess it's a Divisional thing.

So, unless you bring up those other teams, or remind anyone that the late Yankee Boss George Steinbrenner was from Cleveland, or tell the classic "Cleveland Jokes" (like about the city going broke in 1969, the Cuyahoga River catching fire the same year, or Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff's line, "They made me feel at home in Cleveland, so I had to escape again"), you shouldn't have any problem wearing your Jets gear in the city.

Chomps

The Browns hold auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. Their fight song, one of the NFL's oldest, is "Hi-O-Hi-O for Cleveland." They have as mascots both a man in a dog suit named Chomps, and a live bull mastiff named Swagger, who kind of looks like Hooch from Turner & Hooch.

Both are in reference to "The Dawg Pound," the old bleachers at the east end of Municipal Stadium. In 1985, cornerback Hanford Dixon said, "We had the idea of the quarterback being the cat, and the defensive line being the dog. Whenever the defense would get a sack, the defensive linemen and linebackers would bark." Soon, the fans watching training camp would bark along with the players. 

When the season began, much as Washington Redskin fans wore pig masks (or just plastic pig snouts) in honor of their offensive line, nicknamed The Hogs, fans in the Municipal Stadium bleachers would wear dog masks, and yell, "Woof, woof, woof!" Or, in competition with a similar chant for the hated Steelers, "Here we go, Brownies, here we go! Woof, woof!"

It got a little crazy, as the fans, led by 400-pound John "Big Dawg" Thompson (he has BIG DAWG on the back of a Number 98 Browns jersey, and even made "Big Dawg" his legal middle name), began throwing dog biscuits onto the field. Sometimes, they'd throw eggs, or even batteries.

Big Dawg is one of the few NFL fans

famous enough to get autograph requests.

When Cleveland-area native Arsenio Hall got his talk show in 1989, he put a little bleacher section behind the band, and called it The Dawg Pound, and pumped his fist while they yelled, "Woof, woof, woof!"

On December 10, 1989, across the State, when Cincinnati Bengals fans began throwing stuff onto the field, Bengals coach Sam Wyche got a microphone, and told the fans, "Will the next person that sees anybody throw anything onto this field point 'em out? And get 'em outta here! You don't live in Cleveland! You live in Cincinnati!" and got a standing ovation. (Cincinnati doesn't like Cleveland any more than vice versa. The Bengals lost that game to the Seattle Seahawks, 24-17.)

The Browns are 1 of 6 NFL teams that doesn't have cheerleaders. The others are the Giants, the Buffalo Bills, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers.

After the Game. Cleveland has some rough areas, but you should be safe downtown. There are a number of places you could go after the game, with names like the Greenhouse (2038 East 4th Street at Prospect Avenue) and the Winking Lizard (811 Huron Road East at Prospect). A House of Blues is at 308 Euclid Avenue.

The Winking Lizard, a.k.a. Winks, is the home of the local Jet fans' club. The local Giant fans meet at Anthony's, 10703 W. Pleasant Valley Rd. at York Rd., 18 miles southwest of downtown. Bus 45.

If your visit to Cleveland is during the European soccer season, the best place to watch your club is probably The Old Angle Tavern, at 1848 West 25th Street in the Ohio City neighborhood, acros the Cuyahoga, west of downtown. Red Line to West 25th-Ohio City.

Sidelights. Cleveland has a losing reputation. The city (for the moment) haven't won a World Series since 1948, the Browns haven't won an NFL Championship sine 1964 (Super Bowl –II, if you prefer), and the Cavaliers have played since 1970 and took until 2015 just to win their 1st NBA Finals game, before finally winning a title this past June. But Cleveland is still a great sports city.

On February 3, 2017, Thrillist made a list ranking the 30 NFL cities (New York and Los Angeles each having 2 teams), and Cleveland came in 20th, in the bottom half. They praised Cleveland's restaurant and beer scenes, saying, "It's still Cleveland, but it's better than you probably thought."

The new stadium was built on the site of Municipal Stadium, which was also the Indians' part-time home from 1932 to 1946, and their full-time home from 1947 to 1993. An NFL team named the Indians played at the Stadium in its 1st season, 1931.

The stadium opened on July 3, 1931, with a Heavyweight Championship fight. Max Schmeling, quite popular in America before the rise of Nazism in his native Germany, delivered the only knockout of William "Young" Stribling's career.

The NFL's Rams played there from 1936 to 1945, winning the 1945 NFL Championship Game there, but moved to Los Angeles due to lousy attendance. The Browns, founded with the All-America Football Conference in 1946 and moving into the NFL in 1950, played there until 1995, before being moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens and being reborn in 1999.

The Browns won the AAFC Championship in all 4 seasons of that league's existence, then won NFL Championships in 1950, 1954, 1955 and 1964. In fact, the Browns played in a league championship game every season they played, from their 1946 debut until 1955. The 1950 NFL Championship Game, won by a Lou Groza field goal in the last 30 seconds of a chilly Christmas Eve encounter over, ironically, the Rams, is regarded as one of the greatest games in pro football history, although the Rams got revenge in the 1951 title game in Los Angeles.

The Browns lost the 1952 Title Game at home to the Detroit Lions, lost to the Lions in Detroit in 1953, beat the Lions at home in 1954, and beat the Rams in Los Angeles in 1955. A new generation of Browns won the 1964 NFL Championship Game at home against the Baltimore Colts – though it's hard to argue that Baltimore taking the Browns in 1995 was revenge. Still, that '64 Title remains the Browns' last World Championship -- and, until the Cavs won the NBA title in 2016, the city's last. No city with at least 3 major league sports teams has ever had to wait longer.

Most Clevelanders who watch college football are Ohio State University fans, even though Ohio Stadium is 145 miles away in Columbus, which is further from the Browns' Stadium than the Steelers' Heinz Field, 135 miles. Still, while O-State has won many Big Ten titles and some National Championships over the years, including since 1964, they are a team for the entire State, not Cleveland-specific, and have played very few home-away-from-home games in Cleveland.  And Cleveland State only restarted their football program in 2010. So while Cleveland is a great pro football city and a great high school football city, it is not a good college football city.

Municipal Stadium hosted a Beatles concert on August 14, 1966. The Beatles also played Cleveland's Public Auditorium on September 15, 1964. That building, which opened in 1922, not only still stands, it now hosts the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Elvis Presley sang there on November 6, 1971 and June 21, 1974.

It also hosted the Republican Conventions of 1924 (nominating Calvin Coolidge) and 1936 (Alf Landon). And it hosted the only Presidential Debate of 1980, when Ronald Reagan hit Jimmy Carter with the lines, "There you go again," and, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" 500 Lakeside Avenue East, a 6-block walk from Public Square and across from City Hall.

The downtown Cleveland sports complex, known as the Gateway Complex, opened both of its venues in 1994. The Guardians, formerly the Indians, played at Jacobs Field, now Progressive Field ("the Jake" is now known as "the Prog"), next-door to the Cavaliers' Gateway Arena, later known as the Gund Arena, the Quicken Loans Arena ("the Q"), and now the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. 2401 Ontario Street, downtown.

There were 2 different ballparks known as League Park, constructed at East 66th Street and Lexington Avenue on the city's East Side. The 1st was built in 1891, and was the home of the National League's Cleveland Spiders until 1899 and the American League team that became the Indians from 1901 to 1909. A 2nd park built there in 1910 was the Indians' home until 1946. A pro football team called the Cleveland Indians played there from 1916 to 1921.

League Park was also the home of the Cleveland Buckeyes, who played in the Negro Leagues from 1943 to 1950, and won the Negro World Series in 1945.

Unlike most parks of the pre-World War I era (or even before the 1960s), something remains of this park: The ticket office that stood in the right-field corner still stands. And there is a baseball field, a public park, on the site today, although it is currently undergoing renovations. However, this is a poverty-stricken neighborhood – it has never really recovered from the 1966 riot – so do not visit at night.

The Number 3 bus will take you up Superior Avenue to 66th, and it's a 6-block walk; a bus called "The HealthLine," which can be picked up on Euclid Avenue across from the Soldiers & Sailors Monument at Public Square, will take you up Euclid Avenue to 66th, and it's a 7-block walk.

There is a Baseball Heritage Museum, inside the 5th Street Arcades shopping center at 530 Euclid Avenue.  It began as a private collection of Negro League memorabilia, and it grew to include stuff from the Indians and all kinds of baseball, including amateur, industrial/semi-pro, women's and international leagues.

The Cleveland Arena was home to one of the great minor-league hockey teams, the Cleveland Barons, from 1937 to 1974 and the World Hockey Association's Cleveland Crusaders from 1972 to 1974. It was home to the Cleveland Rebels in the 1st NBA season of 1946-47, and the Cavaliers from their 1970 debut until 1974.

It was here, on March 21, 1952, that local disc jockey Alan Freed hosted the Moondog Coronation Ball, which is often called the first rock and roll concert (which is why Cleveland is the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). The place held about 10,000, but about twice that tried to get into Freed's show, launching him on a career that would take him to his pioneering job on New York's WINS and then WABC.

Elvis sang at the Arena on November 23, 1956. While the 1988 film Heartbreak Hotel shows him, played by David Keith, in concert at the Cleveland Arena in 1972, that film is fiction, and the website elvisconcerts.com clearly states that he gave only 1 concert in the State of Ohio that year, at the University of Dayton Arena.

The Arena was demolished in 1977. The HealthLine bus will drop you off at 36th Street; but, again, this is an uneasy neighborhood, so be aware of your surroundings.

From 1974 to 1994, between the Cleveland Arena and the Gund/Quicken Loans Arena, the Cavs played at The Coliseum at Richfield, a.k.a. the Richfield Coliseum. This was also the home of the minor-league Barons in the 1974-75 and 1975-76 seasons, and the NHL version of the Barons (who had been the California Golden Seals) in the 1976-77 and 1977-78 seasons, before money problems forced them to be merged with the Minnesota North Stars.

On March 24, 1975, in his first fight after regaining the heavyweight title from George Foreman, Muhammad Ali fought a journeyman fighter from North Jersey, Chuck Wepner, a.k.a. the Bayonne Bleeder. Wepner actually knocked Ali down in the 9th round, and that pissed Ali off: He clobbered Wepner, but the Marine veteran refused to go down, until he had nothing left and fell to an Ali punch with 19 seconds left in the 15th and final round. Supposedly, seeing this fight on TV led Sylvester Stallone to create the character of Rocky Balboa. Wepner is still alive at age 74, and recently retired from running a liquor store in Carlstadt, Bergen County.

Like the Meadowlands Arena and the Nassau Coliseum, the Richfield Coliseum had two levels of seats and one level of concourse – and, when a full house of 20,000 showed up, this was a mess. The location was also bad, picked because it was halfway between downtown Cleveland and downtown Akron, but it didn't exactly help people of either city. When the Cavs moved out, its days were numbered, and it was demolished in 1999. The site is now a wildlife sanctuary. 2923 W. Streetsboro Road, and don't expect to take public transportation: The closest bus, the 77F, drops you off almost 6 miles away.

Elvis sang at the Coliseum on July 10 and 18, 1975; and on March 21 and October 23, 1976. Elvis actually gave concerts in Cleveland before becoming nationally famous. On February 26, 1955, nearly a year before "Heartbreak Hotel" hit the charts as his first national hit single, he did 2 shows at the Circle Theater, at 105th & Euclid (built 1920, demolished 1959 for the expansion of the Cleveland Clinic, hence the bus is called the "HealthLine," and this area is a bit safer). On October 19, 1955, he again played 2 shows at the venue.

The next day, he did a matinee at Brooklyn High School (9200 Biddulph Road, Number 45 bus to Biddulph and walk a mile west) and an evening show at St. Michael's Hall (Mill Road & Wallings Road, 77F bus to Wallings, walk a mile west and a couple of blocks south on Mill).

No NCAA Final Four has ever been held in the State of Ohio. Ohio State won it in 1960, and lost Finals in 1939, 1961, 1962 and 2007, but they're in the State capital of Columbus, 142 miles from Public Square, and considerably closer to Cincinnati. The most notable college in the area is Cleveland State University, whose Vikings notably reached the Sweet Sixteen as a 14th seed in 1986, upsetting Indiana and St. Joseph's of Philadelphia before David Robinson and Navy beat them by 1 point to keep them out of the Elite Eight, but that's as close as any Northern Ohio team has come to the Final Four. Their campus is headquartered on Euclid Avenue between 17th and 26th Streets.

With the demise of the Barons, minor-league hockey has been played at the Coliseum and The Q, but the closest NHL team is the Pittsburgh Penguins, 134 miles away. It's not clear how much of the fandom of the Columbus Blue Jackets, 143 miles away, comes from Cleveland, but with Cleveland being a big boost to Ohio State's fandom, I can easily imagine Clevelanders preferring a team from Ohio's capital, however much they might dislike the State government, over the team from Steeler Town. If Cleveland ever did get another hockey team, it would rank 17th in population in NHL markets.

Cleveland's highest-ranked soccer team is Cleveland SC, which plays in the National Premier Soccer League, the 4th tier of American soccer. Their home field is the 5,416-seat Don Shula Stadium, formerly Wasmer Field, at John Carroll University, a Jesuit school in NCAA Division III, that nonetheless includes among its alumni Shula and All-Pro linebacker London Fletcher.

20700 N. Park Blvd., in the University Heights section of Cleveland, 9 miles east of Public Square. Blue-Green Waterfront Line to Belvoir Station, then a mile's walk north.

I once asked Drew Carey, through Twitter, if he loves soccer so much, why didn't he try to get a Major League Soccer franchise for Cleveland, instead of buying into the group that owns the Seattle Sounders? Especially since Cleveland had done so well in the Major Indoor Soccer League. He said there was no suitable playing facility, unless they wanted to play before 50,000 empty seats at the new Browns stadium. This made sense, which is why the nearest MLS team is the Columbus Crew, 138 miles away. Presuming the plan to move the Crew to Austin next season goes through, the next-closest is Toronto FC, 289 miles away.

There is a Cleveland Museum of Art, but it's way out on the East Side of the city, at 11150 East Boulevard at Wade Oval Drive, near the campus of Case Western Reserve University. It's a 15-minute walk from the Euclid-East 120th Street Station on the Red Line, or a 35-minute ride on the HealthLine bus. As I said, near the Browns' stadium are the Great Lakes Science Center, at 601 Erieside Avenue; and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at 1100 East 9th Street.

Cleveland was home to a President, James Garfield, elected in 1880 but assassinated just a few months into his Presidency. Although he died near us, at his "Summer White House" in Long Branch, New Jersey, on September 19, 1881, he was born in the Cleveland suburb of Orange (now Moreland Hills, and he was the last President to be born in a log cabin), and his home, Lawnfield, stands at 8095 Mentor Avenue in Mentor, northeast of the city. It takes 4 buses to get there: The 3, the 28, the R2 and the R1, but it is possible to get there without a car or an expensive taxi.

William McKinley, elected in 1896 and 1900, was from Canton, 60 miles away, and there are some historic sites there relating to him. We Yankee Fans also know Canton as the home town of Captain Thurman Munson. But most sports fans know it as the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, selected because it was the location of the NFL's founding meeting on September 17, 1920, at the Hupmobile showroom of Ralph Hay, also the owner of the Canton Bulldogs. The Frank T. Bow Federal Building is now on the site. 201 Cleveland Avenue SW.

The Hall of Fame itself is 3 miles to the northwest, at 2121 George Halas Drive NW, off Exit 107 on Interstate 77. Just to the south is Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, named for the owner of the New Orleans Saints, who made a big donation to renovate the Hall and the adjoining Fawcett Stadium, which was renamed for him. Originally built in in 1938 for McKinley High School, just to the south, it replaced the old 8,000-seat League Field. It now seats 22,375, and annually hosts the NFL's exhibition season-opening Hall of Fame Game.

The Canton Bulldogs played at League Field from 1905 to 1926, winning Ohio League titles in 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1919, and NFL Championships in 1922 (10-0-2), 1923 (11-0-1) and 1924 (7-1-1 -- that's 28-1-4 in 3 seasons). They featured eventual Pro Football Hall-of-Famers Jim Thorpe, Joe Guyon, Guy Chamberlin, Pete Henry, Link Lyman and Greasy Neale, though not all at the same time.

But starpower meant big salaries, and their owners couldn't afford them. After the 1926 season, the NFL cast off several weaker franchise, and the Bulldogs were among them. Thus passed the 1st great professional football team.

The Akron-Canton Regional Airport, where Thurman Munson died on August 2, 1979, is at 5400 Lauby Road in North Canton. He is laid to rest at Sunset Hills Burial Park and Memory Gardens, 5001 Everhard Road NW. Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium is a 5,700-seat minor-league ballpark at 2501 Allen Avenue SE. It was built in 1989, before Camden Yards in Baltimore revolutionized ballpark construction in both the majors and the minors, so it is an all-aluminum stadium, and the Canton-Akron Indians left after the 1996 season to become the Akron Aeros.

It is possible to get from Cleveland to Canton via public transportation, via GoBus, but it takes 2 hours and 20 minutes. Each way.

Akron is about 40 miles south of Cleveland on I-77, a little more than halfway to Canton. There is a Bus C that goes there, taking a little under an hour and costing $10, each way. Since 1997, the Double-A Eastern League team known as the Akron Aeros, and now the Akron RubberDucks (1 word), has played at Canal Park, 300 S. Main Street at Exchange Street.

The 1st NFL Champions were the Akron Pros, in 1920. Their coach was also their best player, two-way back Frederick Douglass "Fritz" Pollard -- the 1st black head coach in any major league sport. (Well, sort of: He was, unquestionably, the head coach; it's the NFL's status as "major league" up until 1933 or so, or even until after World War II, that's questionable.) Another great black football player of the era, the 1917 and '18 All-America end at Rutgers and later actor and singer Paul Robeson, played for them in the 1921 season. (He also played for the Milwaukee Badgers in 1922.)

The Pros played under various names, in various leagues, from 1908 to 1926, but financial problems made them part of the NFL's post-1926 purge, and they folded. They played at League Park, at the southeast corner of Carroll and Beaver Streets, a mile and a half east of downtown. The area is industrial now.

The University of Akron Zips play football at InfoCision Stadium, built in 2009 and seating 27,881. 300 Vine Street. It replaced the 35,000-seat Rubber Bowl (Akron is home to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and its iconic blimps), which stood from 1940 until this year, at 800 George Washington Blvd.

On November 19, 2018, Moneywise compiled a list of their Worst College Football Stadiums, the bottom 19 percent of college football, 25 out of 129. InfoCision Stadium came in 14th, apparently due to a serious lack of atmosphere.

Kent State University is in Kent, about 40 miles southeast of Cleveland. Yankee Legend Thurman Munson was a student there before signing with the Yankees, and was a baseball teammate there of Steve Stone, 1980 American League Cy Young Award winner with the Baltimore Orioles and a Chicago Cubs broadcaster. The Kent State Golden Flashes play at 25,319-seat Dix Stadium, which opened in 1969. 2213 Summit Street.

Of course, Kent State is best known for the events of May 4, 1970, when a demonstration against the Vietnam War led to the Ohio National Guard firing on the protesters, wounding 13 people, 4 of whom died. The fallen fell at what is now Parking Lot R-3. The May 4 Visitors Center is across from the site. 300 Midway Drive. Hard to reach by public transit: The best way is Greyhound to Akron and then Bus 90 to the Student Center.

The best-known Kent State students are comedians, who may have helped people there deal with the trauma: Arsenio Hall in the mid-1970s, and Drew Carey, who left in 1981 and enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Also associated with Ohio are Presidents William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison and William Howard Taft, but they were from the Cincinnati side; Rutherford B. Hayes, whose hometown of Fremont was closer to Toledo; and Warren G. Harding, whose birthplace of Blooming Grove and adult hometown of Marion are closer to Columbus.

The Armstrong Air & Space Museum was built to honor Neil Armstrong, the 1st man to walk on the Moon, in his hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio. The building is, naturally, shaped like a crescent moon. 500 Apollo Drive, 185 miles southwest of Cleveland, 93 miles southwest of Toledo, and 88 miles northwest of Columbus.

If you're a fan of The Drew Carey Show, and you remember the cast's hangout, the Warsaw Tavern, you should know that there is a real-life bar with that name, in Brooklyn (a separate city) south of downtown, on West 22nd Street at Calgary Avenue. Take the Number 35 bus.

Aside from The Drew Carey Show, the biggest TV show filmed in the Forest City has been Hot In Cleveland. 3rd Rock from the Sun was set at Pendleton State University in fictional Rutherford, said to be 52 miles from Cleveland, a distance suggesting that the school was probably based on Kent State University.

The Fernwood franchise -- Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and its spinoffs, Forever Fernwood and
Fernwood 2 Night, running on from 1976 to 1978, was set in a city named Fernwood, which is the name of a real town in eastern Ohio, but hardly big enough to match the shows' setting. It was probably based on Cleveland, hometown of Martin Mull, who played twin brothers Garth and Barth Gimble on the shows.

The house from the film A Christmas Story, in which Cleveland stands in for Chicago and author Jean Shepherd's hometown of Hammond, Indiana, is at 3159 West 11th Street at Rowley Avenue, and was restored by a fan to its exact appearance in the movie, made in 1983 but set around 1939 or so. Take the Number 81 bus.

The Higbee's store was also real, but was most likely based on Chicago's real-life Marshall Field's chain. Higbee's still stands on Public Square, and the sign visible in the movie is still there, but the store moved out years ago, and the building is now home to the Cleveland Convention & Visitors Bureau and Horseshoe Casino Cleveland.

Roy Orbison played his last concert, on December 4, 1988, 2 days before his death, at the Front Row Theater. It was torn down in 1995, and a Home Depot is now on the site. 6199 Wilson Mills Road, in Highland Heights, 13 miles east of Public Square. Red Line to Stokes-Windermere, then Bus 7A.

Toledo is 115 miles west of Cleveland, where the Maumee River flows into Lake Erie. Megabus can get you there in 2½ hours. In fact, it's closer to Detroit: 60 miles. For this reason, their Triple-A baseball team, the Toledo Mud Hens, has been a farm club of the Detroit Tigers for much of their history, including continuously since 1987.

What's a "mud hen"? It's a bird that flocked near Bay View Park, where the team played from 1886 to 1896. It's also known as an American coot. The team left the next season, but the name stuck. The stadium remained in place, and was used as the site of the Heavyweight Championship fight of July 4, 1919, when Jack Dempsey won the title by destroying Jess Willard. It's all parkland now, except for the clubhouse of the Bay View Yacht Club. 3900 Summit Street, 3½ miles northeast of downtown.

Originally known as the Toledo Blue Stockings, they played at League Park from 1883 to 1885, before moving to Bay View Park. It was here, in the 1884 season, that they fielded catcher Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker and his brother, outfielder Weldy Wilbeforce "Welday" Walker, the 1st 2 black players in what we would now call Major League Baseball, but were forced by the baseball establishment to let them go.

The Taylor Body Shop is now on the site of this important, but shunted-aside, piece of baseball history. 1400 Monroe Street, just west of downtown. 

The Mud Hens moved to Armory Park, playing there from 1897 to 1909. This was the home of an early pro football team, the Toledo Maroons, from 1902 onward. In 1922, they entered the NFL, but it became too expensive for them, and they folded after the 1923 season. Armory Park was demolished in 1934, and the site is now part of the Civic Center Mall, on Jackson Street between Spielbusch Avenue and Erie Street.

Swayne Field opened in 1909, and was the home of the Mud Hens until 1955. This stadium, eventually reaching 14,800 seats after a 1928 expansion, would have been "home" to the M*A*S*H
character Max Klinger, played by Toledo native Jamie Farr, who made the Hens' jersey and block-T cap nationally famous. For this reason, the modern version of the team retired Number 1, which Farr wore in character as Klinger, for him.

In 1927, the Mud Hens won their 1st Pennant at Swayne Field. But they were never prosperous, and in 1955, they moved, and the ballpark was soon demolished. A shopping center, including a McDonald's, is on the site now. 3000 Monroe Street, at Detroit Avenue (U.S. Route 24), 2 miles west of downtown, and a mile and a half's walk down Monroe from the site of League Park.

The team was revived in 1965, when the 10,197-seat Lucas County Stadium opened, thanks to the efforts of County Commissioner Ned Skeldon. They won the Pennant in 1968. In 1988, when it was learned Skeldon was dying, the County government renamed the stadium for him. He lived long enough to see it, dying 3 months later.

Ned Skeldon Stadium remains a home for amateur baseball, as part of the Lucas County Recreation Center. 2901 Key Street in suburban Maumee, 8 miles southwest of downtown.

In 2002, the Mud Hens moved back downtown, to the 10,300-seat Fifth Third Field, named for an Ohio-based bank (which also holds naming rights to Dayton's ballpark and the University of Cincinnati's arena). They won Pennants there in 2005 and 2006. 406 Washington Street at Huron Street, downtown.

And while Adam's Ribs, the Chicago barbecue joint mentioned in one of the better M*A*S*H 
episodes, isn't real (though many places with the name have popped up since that 1974 episode), Klinger's beloved sausage emporium, Tony Packo's Café, is absolutely real. The original is at 1902 Front Street at Consaul Street, 2 miles across the river from downtown, and they have another across from the ballpark at 7 S. Superior Street.

Elvis sang at the 5,230-seat Toledo Sports Arena on November 22, 1956, and at the University of Toledo's 8,300-seat John F. Savage Arena on April 23, 1977. The old Sports Arena stood at 1 Main Street at Riverside Drive, a mile across the river from downtown, from 1947 to 2007, hosting concerts and minor-league hockey. It was replaced by the 5,000-seat Huntington Center, at 500 Jefferson Avenue at Huron Street, downtown. It is home to minor-league hockey's Toledo Walleyes. The Savage Arena is at 2025 Douglas Road, on campus, 4 miles west of downtown.

Bowling Green State University, of the Mid-American Conference, is 112 miles west of Public Square, and 22 miles south of downtown Toledo. They won hockey's National Championship in 1984. The 5,000-seat Slater Family Ice Arena is at 417 N. Mercer Road.

The 24,000-seat Doyt Perry Stadium, built in 1966 and named for their former football coach, who from 1955 to 1964 won 5 of the school's 12 MAC Championships, is next-door, at Stadium Drive & Alumni Drive. Perry once served on Woody Hayes' staff at Ohio State, as did Michigan coach Bo Schembechler, and the 3 would often (not during football season or recruiting season) meet at Doyt's house, as it was halfway. (Not really: Bowling Green is 69 miles from Ann Arbor and 118 miles from Columbus.)

Cleveland likes to call itself "America's North Coast," but, in spite of its infamous Winter, it does have beach resorts. Headlands Beach State Park attracts 2 million visitors a year from America and Canada (presumably, mostly from nearby Ontario). 9601 Headlands Rd., in Mentor, 29 miles northeast of Public Square. Unreachable by public transit.

And there's a beach at Cedar Point, the lakeshore town that also includes an amusement park that serves as Ohio's answer to Great Adventure. (Six Flags has nothing to do with it.) They call themselves the Roller Coaster Capital of the World. Cedar Point Road, in Sandusky. 61 miles east of Public Square. Again, no public transit, but Sandusky can be reached by Greyhound.

*

A visit to Cleveland can be a fun experience. These people love football. They don't like the Yankees, but they don't much mind the Jets, and their city should be able to show you a good time. Again, don't mention that George Steinbrenner was a Clevelander. And, for your own sake, don't mention the name of Art Modell. 

How to Be a New York Baseball Fan In Milwaukee -- 2022 Edition

The Yankees went to Milwaukee every season from 1970 to 1997, when the Brewers got kicked over from the American League to the National League. Now, they only go there when the quirks of the Interleague schedule work out that way. However, they will be going there next weekend, starting on Friday night.

Before You Go. Milwaukee is on Lake Michigan, which makes it chilly in the winter. But this is late May, so the weather shouldn't be much of an issue.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website is predicting high 70s for the afternoons, and the mid-60s for the evenings. There is very little chance of rain for all 3 days, but even if it does rain, the ballpark has a retractable roof, so it won't rain on you during the games.

Milwaukee is in the Central Time Zone, an hour behind New York. Adjust your various timepieces accordingly.

Tickets. The Brewers averaged 35,374 fans per home game in 2019, the last pre-COVID season. Nevertheless, as any rivalry between the Yankees and Brewers died when the Brewers went to the NL,  you should be able to buy any ticket you can afford.

On the Field Level (lower), Infield Boxes are $78 and Outfield Boxes are $48. On the Loge (middle), Infield Boxes are $52 and Outfield Boxes are $40. On the Terrace (upper), Boxes are $27 and Reserved are $20. Bleachers are $20.

Getting There. Downtown Milwaukee is 879 land miles from Times Square. And American Family Field is 893 miles from Citi Field, 887 miles from Yankee Stadium II. Knowing this, your first reaction is going to be to fly out there.

At first, unlike some other Midwestern cities, this seems like a good idea if you can afford it. But, this time, it's going to be really expensive, over $1,100 round-trip. Most airlines will make at least one stop between any of the New York area airports and General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, most likely in Chicago, and you'll spend nearly as much time on the ground at O'Hare as you do in the air. The GRE bus will get you downtown in a little over half an hour. Given the price, you're probably better off flying to Chicago (for under $600) and taking Amtrak or Greyhound from there to Milwaukee.

(Billy Mitchell was a Milwaukee-area native, a General in the U.S. Army Air Service, and an early advocate for air power. Although he didn't live to see its establishment, he is called the Father of the U.S. Air Force.)

The Milwaukee Intermodal Station, which serves both Greyhound and Amtrak, is at 433 W. St. Paul Avenue, at 5th Street. Round-trip Greyhound fare is $714, although it can drop to as low as $436 with advanced purchase.

Milwaukee Intermodal Station

Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited (formerly known as the Twentieth Century Limited when the old New York Central Railroad ran it from Grand Central Terminal to Chicago's LaSalle Street Station) leaves New York's Penn Station at 3:40 every afternoon, and arrives at Union Station at 225 South Canal Street in Chicago at 10:12 (Central Time) every morning. From there, you have to wait until 1:05 PM to get on Hiawatha Service, which will bring you to Milwaukee at 2:34. That's 23 hours, 49 minutes.

If you start this trip on Thursday afternoon in order to see the entire 3-game series, you can leave Milwaukee by Amtrak on 5:45 on Sunday afternoon, be in Chicago at 7:14, and leave Chicago on the Lake Shore Limited at 9:30 and arrive back at Penn Station at 6:42 PM on Monday. Round-trip fare is $306.

If you decide to drive, it's far enough that it will help to get someone to go with you and split the duties, and to trade off driving and sleeping.  You'll need to get into New Jersey, and take Interstate 80 West. You'll be on I-80 for the vast majority of the trip, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Ohio, in the western suburbs of Cleveland, I-80 will merge with Interstate 90. From this point onward, you won't need to think about I-80 until you head home; I-90 is the key, until it merges with Interstate 94, which will merge with Interstate 43, but you have to worry only about I-94.

I-94 will split off from I-43 at downtown Milwaukee, and then "turn left," becoming the East-West Freeway. Take Exit 308A for Mitchell Blvd., then turn right on Frederick Miller Way (named for the founder of Miller Beer; a left turn will get you onto Selig Drive, named for the Commissioner and former Brewer owner). The ballpark will be on your left.

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and a half in New Jersey, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Pennsylvania, 4 hours in Ohio, 2 hours and 30 minutes in Indiana, an hour and a half in Illinois, and just under an hour in Wisconsin. That's about 15 hours and 45 minutes. Counting rest stops, and accounting for traffic in both New York and Chicago, it should be no more than 20 hours, which would save you time on both Greyhound and Amtrak, if not on flying.

Once In the City. As Alice Cooper taught us in the film version of Wayne's World, Milwaukee gets its name from a Native American word meaning "the good land." But this may not be correct: Another version says the name comes a word meaning "Gathering place by the water."

Either way, the respective descriptions are accurate: The land of Wisconsin is good for farming, and Milwaukee is based on a confluence of 3 rivers that flow into Lake Michigan: The Milwaukee, the Menomonee, and the Kinnickinnic; so there's plenty of water. The Menomonee River separates the city's streets into North and South, and the other 2 rivers separate them into East and West.

Founded in 1846, the city has about 600,000 people, making it the 3rd-largest in the Great Lakes region behind Chicago and Detroit. But the metropolitan area has only about 2 million, making it dead last among the 30 MLB teams. (Throwing in Green Bay's metro area only boosts it by about 325,000, and only raises their ranking to 29th, ahead of Kansas City.) But the construction of modern Miller Park/American Family Field means that the Brewers, unlike the Braves to Atlanta in 1965, won't be moving out of Milwaukee in the foreseeable future. 

Milwaukee's historic City Hall

Milwaukee was about 72 percent white as recently as 1980, but is now about 42 percent black, 37 percent white, 17 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent Asian. The German presence that established the city as a major brewing center is still in place, about 21 percent, or more than half of the white population. Poles make up about 9 percent, Irish 6 percent, Italian 3 percent, with some of mixed heritage. Most of the Hispanics, as is the case with most Midwestern cities, are Mexican.

On July 30, 1967, right after it happened in Newark and Detroit, Milwaukee was struck with a race riot. They were lucky in that only 4 people died. In 2002, Jet magazine called Milwaukee "the most segregated city in the United States." In 2011, a University of Michigan study backed this up. North of the Menomonee River, but west of the Milwaukee River, the city is mostly black. North of the Menomonee, but east of the Milwaukee, and in the suburbs, it's mostly white. South of the Menomonee River, it's mostly Hispanic.

In 2015, the news site 24/7 Wall Street labeled Milwaukee "the worst place for African-Americans to live," despite the Sheriff of Milwaukee County being black. But that Sheriff was David Clarke, an arch-conservative and a Trump ally, who said that the Black Lives Matter group had to be "eradicated."

Wisconsin Electric Power Company runs the city's electricity. Wisconsin's sales tax is 5 percent, but inside Milwaukee County, it's 5.6 percent. Which is still lower than those of the States of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut even before local taxes are added on. The Milwaukee County Transit System has a fare of $2.25 for its buses. The city now has a light rail system, "The Hop," and it's free! That's the good news. The bad news is, it doesn't go anywhere near the ballpark.

ZIP Codes in Wisconsin start with the digits 53 and 54, and for the Milwaukee area, 530, 531 and 532. The Area Code is 414 for the city and 262 for the suburbs. Milwaukee does not have a "beltway."

Going In. Getting from downtown to American Family Field by public transportation is a little tricky. The Number 10 bus goes down Wisconsin Avenue, but its closest point is a little over a mile from the stadium. You'd need to get off at the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and 45th Street, make a left on Story Parkway and a left at the fork onto Yount Drive.

American Family Field,

with Helfaer Field behind the home plate entrance

You'll walk under I-94, and on your right will be Helfaer Field, a baseball field on the site of Milwaukee County Stadium. American Family Field will be straight ahead.

It opened as Miller Park in 2001, named for the biggest brewer in America's biggest beer-brewing city. In 2021, it was renamed American Family Field, for an insurance company.

Milwaukee has its bad neighborhoods, but like County Stadium, AFF is an island in a sea of parking, so regardless of whether you took a bus or drove, you should be safe. The stadium points southeast, as did County Stadium before it, but that doesn't matter a whole lot, since you're 4 miles west of downtown and Milwaukee doesn't exactly provide a great view of skyscrapers. The official address is 1 Brewers Way. Parking at American Family Field is $25.

Outside the ballpark, there is a sculpture titled "Teamwork," in memory of the 3 construction workers killed in the collapse of a crane in 1999: William DeGrave, Jerome Starr and Jeffrey Wischer. The collapse not only killed those men, but damaged the unfinished stadium so badly that its opening date had to be pushed back from April 2000 to April 2001.

As I said, AFF has a retractable roof. At this time of year, the roof is likely to be open, unless it gets hot -- and, as I said when citing the forecast, it probably won't get hot (but rain may be a factor). The park is not symmetrical: Left field is 344 feet from home plate, left-center is 371, center is 400, right-center is 374, and right is 345. It's better for hitters with the roof closed, better for pitchers with the roof open.

The field is natural grass, and points southeast. The Brewers have never played a home game on artificial turf. Home plate is the same one used at County Stadium, transferred over in 2000, although I can't prove that it's the same one that's been used since County Stadium opened in 1953.

The longest home run at American Family Field just happened, a 499-foot shot by Christian Yelich on September 7, 2022. I can't find a definitive answer as to who hit the longest homer at County Stadium. But, despite the presence on the home teams of such longball artists as Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Joe Adcock, Gorman Thomas and Rob Deer, the only player who appears to have hit one all the way out of it was Cecil Fielder, with a September 14, 1991 drive that went 502 feet. His son, Prince Fielder, hit a 484-footer in 2006, and that was the longest at the current Brewers stadium until Yelich's drive.

AFF hasn't yet hosted pro football, but it's hosted "futbol," all during the MLB All-Star Break, which is also European soccer's off-season. On July 16, 2014, Swansea City of Wales and Chivas of Guadalajara, Mexico played to a 1-1 draw. On July 14, 2015, it was Britain vs. Mexico again: Atlas defeated Newcastle United 2-1. On July 11, 2018, it was an all-Mexican matchup, as Pachuca beat Leon 3-1.

The ballpark has also hosted concerts, starting with country star George Strait in 2001. Other music legends to play there include Bruce Springsteen in 2003 and Paul McCartney in 2013. On October 2, 2010, AFF hosted the 25th Anniversary concert for Farm Aid, with Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp. "For the youngsters across the United States," as Ed Sullivan used to say, it hosted One Direction in 2015 and Ed Sheeran in 2018.

Food. In Big Ten Country, where tailgate parties are practically a sacrament, you would expect the Milwaukee ballpark to have lots of good options. With Wisconsin's German heritage in mind, there are Beer Carts and Brat Boys stands all over the place, and a Friday's Beer Garden at the Left Field Gate. A "bratwurst with red sauce" has been one of Major League Baseball's most-honored culinary delights since the Braves were in town. The Brewers also serve various other sausages, many of them of ethnic varieties, as reflected in the Sausage Race.

Like Greg Luzinski in Philadelphia, Boog Powell in Baltimore, and a few others, Milwaukee has a barbecue stand operated by a club legend, in this case "Stormin' Gorman" Thomas. Gorman's Corner is behind Section 103 in right field. There's a Fry Bar at Section 106, baked potato stands at 125 and 214, and "Hot Cheese" at 208. (Hot cheese? Yes, they serve grilled cheese sandwiches and cheese fries.) Big B's Diner has locations at 110 and 126, and Bernie's Clubhouse, named for Bernie Brewer, at 422. Friday's Front Row Sports Grille -- named after a line from a Miller Lite commercial that Bob Uecker did back in the day -- is in left field.

According to a recent Thrillist article on the best food at each big-league ballpark, the best thing to eat at American Family Field is "Bratchos on a stick." What-chos on a stick? It's a fried wad of cheese, seasoned ground beef (that would be the "brat" part), crushed Doritos (that would be the "chos" part) and sour cream on a 6-inch toothpick. I think if you can eat three without having a heart attack, you should get the next one free. It's available all over the stadium.

Fortunately, the ballpark has several ice cream stands. Unfortunately, the ice cream is Blue Bunny, which I suggest staying away from. Blue Bunny is so bad (How bad is it?), it makes Turkey Hill taste like Breyer's. But there are also Dippin' Dots stands.

Team History Displays. In addition to "Teamwork," American Family Field has statue honors for 4 significant figures from Milwaukee's baseball history: Hank Aaron of the Braves (who also played his last 2 years with the Brewers), Brewers founding owner Allan H. "Bud" Selig (now the Commissioner), shortstop Robin Yount, and Bob Uecker, who was the 1st Milwaukee (or even Wisconsin) native to play for the Braves, and now longtime broadcaster for the Brewers.

Fingers, Selig and Aaron at the dedication for Selig's statue

It was because Major League was filmed in Milwaukee, rather than Cleveland, that Ueck was hired to play the Indians' acerbic, hard-drinking broadcaster Harry Doyle -- a man much closer in personality to Harry Caray than to the real Ueck.

I don't think Ueck's statue looks much like him.

The Brewers' retired numbers are high above center field: 1, Bud Selig, owner 1970-98 (never worn by him, obviously); 4, Paul Molitor, 3rd baseman and designated hitter 1978-92; 19, Robin Yount, shortstop-center field 1973-93; 34, Rollie Fingers, pitcher 1981-85; 44, Hank Aaron, designated hitter 1975-76; and the universally-retired 42 of Jackie Robinson.

The Brewers have also not reissued, though not also retired, the Number 17 of Wisconsin native Jim Gantner, 2nd baseman 1976-92. They have also honored Uecker with a not-retired, still-in-circulation Number 50, which hangs with the retired numbers in honor of Uecker's 1st 50 years in pro baseball.

If you saw Mr. 3000, which filmed at then-Miller Park among others, sorry, but Stan Ross (1st base, 1978-95 & 2004 -- taking the place of Cecil Cooper for a few years) is fictional, and his Number 21 has not been retired, although it is not currently worn.

The Brewers have a team Wall of Honor, with a whopping 71 members:

* Straddling the eras: Selig, Uecker, general managers Harry Dalton and Doug Melvin, and 1980s catcher Bill Schroeder as a broadcaster.

* From the 1970s, but not making it into the team's 1st era of contention: Aaron; pitchers Ken Sanders and Jim Colborn; outfielders Dave May and Johnny Briggs; catcher Darrell Porter; and 1st baseman George Scott.

* From the 1978 team that was the 1st Brewer squad to make it into a Pennant race, but not making it to the 1982 Pennant: Pitchers Bill Castro and Bill Travers, outfielder Sixto Lezcano and 3rd baseman Sal Bando.

* From the 1982 Pennant winners: Yount, Molitor, Fingers, Gantner, Sutton, Thomas; manager Harvey Kuenn (a Milwaukee native who had once played for the Braves); pitchers Jim Slaton, Jerry Augustine, Moose Haas, Mike Caldwell, Bob McClure and Pete Vukovich; catcher Ted Simmons, 1st baseman Cecil Cooper, 3rd baseman Don Money, left fielder Ben Oglivie and right fielder Charlie Moore.

* From the close calls of 1987 and 1988, but joining after the 1982 Pennant: Pitchers Teddy Higuera, Bill Wegman, Chris Bosio, Dan Plesac and Chuck Crim; catcher Bill Schroeder, and outfielders Rob Deer, B.J. Surhoff and Darryl Hamilton.

* From the 1990s: Pitchers Jaime Navarro, Cal Eldred, Mike Fetters and Bob Wickman; catcher Dave Nilsson, 1st baseman John Jaha, 2nd basemen Fernando Viña and Mark Loretta, shortstops Pat Listach and José Valentín, 3rd basemen Kevin Seitzer and Jeff Cirillo; and outfielders Greg Vaughn and Jeromy Burnitz.

* From the 2000s, but not making it to 2008: 1st baseman Richie Sexson and outfielder Geoff Jenkins.

* From the 2008 Wild Card team: Pitchers Ben Sheets and Yovani Gallardo, 1st baseman Prince Fielder, 2nd baseman Rickie Weeks, shortstop J.J. Hardy, infielder Bill Hall, shortstop Craig Counsell, left fielder Ryan Braun, and right fielder Corey Hart. Hart should not be confused with the Canadian singer of the same name, although if the roof at American Family Field is closed, with all the lights, he may just wear his sunglasses at night.

* From the 2009 and '10 seasons, but not '08 or '11: Pitcher Trevor Hoffman. He was only with the Brewers for 2 non-Playoff seasons, but he did play for them and make the Baseball Hall of Fame.

* From the 2011 NL Central Division Champions: Counsell, Fielder, Hart, Weeks, Braun, center fielder Carlos Gómez, catcher Jonathan Lucroy, and pitcher Francisco "K-Rod" Rodríguez. Counsell is now the manager of the Brewers, having managed them to the postseason in the last 4 seasons, including the 2018 and 2021 NL Central Division Championships.

* From the 2018, '19 and '20 postseason teams: So far, Braun is the only player, in addition to manager Counsell, GM Melvin, and broadcasters Uecker and Schroeder. And no one has been inducted from the '21 postseason team.

The Brewers also have a Milwaukee Baseball Walk of Fame, honoring 21 greats from both teams. From the Brewers, it honors Selig, Kuenn, Dalton, Uecker, Aaron, Yount, Molitor, Fingers, Money, Thomas, Cooper, Gantner, Higuera, Jenkins and Fielder. From the Braves, it honors Aaron, Kuenn, pitchers Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette, 3rd baseman Eddie Mathews, 1st baseman Joe Adcock, shortstop Johnny Logan and general manager John Quinn.

In addition to Aaron, Spahn, Mathews, Yount, Molitor, Thomas, Gantner, Kuenn, Cooper, Selig and Uecker, the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame has honored Braves broadcaster Earl Gillespie; minor-league Brewers stars Charlie Grimm and Joe Hauser, and Wisconsin-born baseball stars Kid Nichols, Ginger Beaumont, Davy Jones, Addie Joss, Billy Sullivan, George McBride, Fred Luderus, Pants Rowland, Ed Konetchy, Burleigh Grimes, Al Simmons, Ray Berres and Ken Keltner. Nichols, Joss, Grimes, Al Simmons and Ted Simmons (not related) are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Aaron and Spahn were named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999. That same year, The Sporting News named Aaron, Spahn, Mathews, Fingers and Molitor to their 100 Greatest Baseball Players. In the TV special that NBC did for the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, John Rawlings, then TSN's editor, admitted that, despite being a Hall-of-Famer, a member of the 3,000 Hit Club and an MVP at 2 different positions, Yount was one of the last players cut.

Yount was, however, honored by Brewer fans as their team's entry in the 2006 DHL Hometown Heroes poll. In 2022, ESPN named its 100 Greatest Baseball Players. The players who played significant time for a Milwaukee were Aaron in 3rd, Spahn in 47th, Mathews in 64th, Yount in 80th and Molitor in 84th.

The Brewers hang their notations for their 1981 American League Division Series appearance, their 1982 AL Pennant, their 2008 National League Wild Card berth, and their 2011, 2018 and 2021 NL Central Division titles over the left-field fence, over the Front Row Sports Grille. There is also a Braves Monument at AFF. But there is no mention of the Braves' 1957 World Championship or 1958 NL Pennant, or the 8 American Association Pennants won by the Triple-A version of the Milwaukee Brewers in 1913, 1914, 1936, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1951 and 1952.

The Brewers have not one, not two, but three notable rivalries, all reflected in football. Packers-Bears first made one between the Brewers and the Chicago White Sox, but that one was scaled back after the 1998 League switch, resulting in one with the Chicago Cubs. The League switch also scaled back the rivalry with the Minnesota Twins, which reflected Packers-Vikings and Gophers-Badgers. The Brewers slightly lead the Cubs, 209-208; but trail the The White Sox, 208-181; and the Twins, 252-237.

Stuff. The Brewers Team Stores are located at the Home Plate and Left Field Gates. The usual items that can be found at a souvenir store can be found there.

The Brewers have been around for over 50 years now, but because Milwaukee, as a city, gets lost in the shadows not only of Chicago, 90 miles to the south, but the smaller yet higher-profile city of Green Bay, 115 miles to the north, the Brewers tend to get forgotten. They trail not only the Packers, but also the football team at the University of Wisconsin in popularity among Badger State teams. (They may even trail that school's very successful hockey program, even though Milwaukee doesn't have an NHL team.)

As a result of this, there aren't many good books about the Brew Crew. Todd Mishler wrote Baseball in Brewtown: America's Pastime in Milwaukee. It covers not just the Brewers, but their preceding Triple-A namesake, and the Braves, and the teams that called the city home in the 19th Century. But it was published in 2005, and doesn't cover the recent renaissance that saw the Brewers win the NL's Wild Card in 2008, '19 and 20; and the NL Central in 2011, '18 and '21.

Milwaukee's greatest baseball moment -- their only World Championship in the sport to date -- came when the Yankees, finding the much smaller city's over-the-top reaction to the Brewers to be comical, called Milwaukee "Bushville" (as in "bush league"), and came to regret it. This story is told in John Klima's book Bushville Wins! The Wild Saga of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and the Screwballs, Sluggers, and Beer Swiggers Who Canned the New York Yankees and Changed Baseball. The title is longer than the Series was -- and both the '57 and the '58 Series went the full 7.

The 1957 World Series' official highlight film seems not to be in an official package sold at either Brewers or Braves games. The Brewers do have a DVD honoring their lone Pennant: Harvey's Wallbangers: The 1982 Milwaukee Brewers. Uecker narrates this story about Kuenn and his leadership of a club that had been terrible until 1977, then became a "close but no cigar" team under George Bamberger, before Bambi was fired and Kuenn was brought in, turning "Bambi's Bombers" into "Harvey's Wallbangers."

There is also a DVD titled The Essential Games of the Milwaukee Brewers. While there are a few bonus features, there are only 4 games on it, as opposed to the standard 6: 1982 AL Championship Series Game 5, in which the Brew Crew won what is still their only Pennant; 1982 World Series Game 4, a come-from-behind victory in a Series they went on to lose in 7; September 28, 2008, a date which lives in Met infamy but in Brewer legend as they clinched the Wild Card berth by beating their arch-rivals, the Cubs; and 2011 NL Division Series Game 5, in which they beat the Arizona Diamondbacks to win a postseason series for the 1st time in 29 years (and only the 2nd time in their 1st 43 years of play).

During the Game. A recent Thrillist article on "Baseball's Most Intolerable Fans" ranked Brewer fans 30th. Dead last. In other words, they were judged to be the most tolerable: "You'd be hard-pressed to find a more affable fanbase than Brewers fans. They just kind of roll with things."

Brewer fans, as you might expect in America's foremost brewing city, like to drink. If this were a Packer game and you were wearing Chicago Bears or Minnesota Vikings gear, you might be in trouble. If this were a UW game and you were wearing University of Minnesota gear, you might be in trouble. If this were a Bucks game and you were wearing Chicago Bulls gear, you'd probably be safe. If this were a Brewers-Cubs game, and you were wearing Cubs gear, you might be in trouble. But it's a Brewers-Mets game, so if you don't start anything, they won't continue anything. Wisconsans are good people.

Apparently, the Wisconsin-Minnesota rivalry

doesn't extend to the mascots. Bernie Brewer poses

with the Twins' T.C. Bear at the Twins' Target Field.

All 3 games of these series feature promotions. Friday is Miller Lite Beer Pen Night, for all fans age 21 and up. Saturday is Cerverceros Night, as the Brewers pay tribute to Latin American heritage by wearing uniforms that say "Cerverceros," which is "Brewers" in Spanish. Sunday is Toy Tractor Day, Military Half-Price Discount Day, and, as with every Sunday, Kids Run the Bases.

Since 1973, the Brewers have had a mascot, Bernie Brewer. At County Stadium, there was a giant keg and beer stein behind center field, with a chalet next to it. Upon each Brewer home run, Bernie, a man in a costume whose big foam head had a big blond mustache, would slide down a chute from the chalet into the mug, releasing balloons.

Bernie's Chalet at County Stadium

The setup was removed in 1984, but restored in 1993. A new version was installed in left field when Miller Park opened in 2001.

Bernie's slide at American Family Field

The Sausage Race began in in 1992, as a cartoon show on the scoreboard. Live races by men (sometimes women) in 7-foot-3 sausage suits began the next season: They would come out of the left field gate and run toward home plate.

The original sausages are #1, Brett Wurst (a bratwurst in lederhosen, representing the city's German heritage); #2, Stosh Jonjak (a guy in a rugby-style shirt, cap and sunglasses, representing a Polish sausage), and #3, Guido (no last name, wearing a chef's outfit and having a long, thin mustache, representing an Italian sausage).

#4, Frankie Furter (a guy in a baseball uniform and wearing eye-black, representing standard hot dogs) was added in 1995; and #5, Cinco (a sombrero-wearing Chorizo, a nod to Latino fans) was added in 2006.

The original cartoon version was inspired by the "Dot Race" that used to appear on the scoreboard at Texas Rangers games, which also inspired the Airplane Race on the DiamondVision board at Mets games and The Great City Subway Race at Yankee games. Since then, the Rangers have returned the favor, having made the Dot Race live-action, but they are designed to resemble Texas pioneers Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and Sam Houston.

In addition, the Pittsburgh Pirates have the Great Pierogi Race, the Washington Nationals have the Racing Presidents, and several other teams have mascot races involving their various sponsors.

The Brewers hold auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. In the 7th inning stretch, after playing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," the Brewers play "The Beer Barrel Polka": "Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun... " Their postgame victory song is "You Make My Dreams Come True" by Daryl Hall & John Oates.

After the Game. As American Family Field is separated from the city by parking, safety should not be an issue. Although Milwaukeeans like to drink, this is not a Packers or Badgers game, so you should be fine. Unfortunately, this same distance from, well, anything means that there's no good places to get a postgame meal or drink within walking distance.

The difference between the Brewers' ballpark (past and present) and the Bucks' arena (past, present and future) could not be more stark. At 340 W. Kilbourn Avenue, across 4th Street from the MECCA and a block from the Fiserv Forum is "Milwaukee's Sports Headquarters," one of the most famous sports bars in the country, Major Goolsby -- officially, no apostrophe-S on the end. "The Major's" has been catering to Wisconsin sports fans since 1971. The Mecca Sports Bar, named for the former arena, is across from the Fiserv Forum, at 1134 Phillips Avenue.

Unfortunately, I can find no reference to any Milwaukee bar or restaurant that caters to New York expatriates.

If you visit Milwaukee during the European soccer season (which is now over, and will start up again in mid-August), the best place to watch your favorite club is the Highbury Pub, at 2322 S. Kinnickinnic Avenue at Lincoln Avenue, about 3 miles south of downtown. Bus 15. Named for the former stadium of Arsenal Football Club, which was named for the North London neighborhood it was in, there is also a bar by that name in Brooklyn.

Sidelights. Milwaukee's sports history is long, but not especially successful, especially when you consider the 119-mile distance between the city and the State's most successful sports team, the Green Bay Packers. Milwaukee County Stadium was located behind the home plate entrance to American Family Field (which was built across center field from its predecessor).

County Stadium during the 1957 World Series

The Braves played there from 1953 to 1965, the Brewers from 1970 to 2000, and the Packers played several home games there from 1953 to 1994, first 2 out of their 6 (when the NFL had a 12-game schedule), then 2 of their 7 (14), and finally 3 of their 8 (16), plus a preseason game (an another preseason game at the University of Wisconsin's Camp Randall Stadium). The Packers played a Playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams at County Stadium in 1967, before winning the NFL Championship against the Dallas Cowboys at Lambeau Field on New Year's Eve, the famed Ice Bowl.

County Stadium in the Brewers' glory days of the 1980s

County Stadium hosted the only game, to date, played by the U.S. national soccer team in Wisconsin. It was on July 28, 1990, against East Germany, in one of that foul country's last games before being reunited with their Federal Republic (West German) brothers. We lost.

* Borchert Field. The minor-league Milwaukee Brewers played here from 1888 to 1952, at a wooden park originally named Athletic Park, and renamed in 1928 for the late former owner Otto Borchert. These Brewers were the 1st pro baseball team owned by Bill Veeck, from 1941 to 1945, before he moved on to the major leagues.

It was at "Borchert's Orchard" that he first tried his promotional stunts, and it made Milwaukee one of the most successful minor-league markets, not just on the field but at the box office.

The Brewers won 8 American Association Pennants there: 1913, 1914, 1936, 1943, 1944, 1945 (that's 3 straight under Veeck's ownership), 1951 and 1952 (in their last 2 seasons of existence before the Braves came in).

The best-known photo of Borchert Field, showing its

Polo Grounds-like dimensions. No, I don't know

why the area behind the foul lines looks dug-up.

The Milwaukee Bears of the Negro Leagues also played here, as did the Milwaukee Chicks of the All-American Girls' Professional Baseball League in their only season of 1944, the Milwaukee Badgers of the NFL from 1922 to 1926, and the Packers played the occasional Milwaukee game here from 1933 to 1952.

Actually, the place was better for football than for baseball: Like the Polo Grounds, it had a distant center field but foul poles that were much too close, 267 feet. An overhanging roof that covered the infield stands didn't help matters. As Veeck himself put it, "Borchert Field, an architectural monstrosity, was so constructed that the fans on the first-base side of the grandstand couldn't see the right fielder, which seemed perfectly fair in that the fans on the third-base side couldn't see the left fielder. 'Listen,' I told them. 'This way you'll have to come back twice to see the whole team.'" 

A rare color photo of Borchert Field.

I didn't even know that this photo existed

until I did the 2017 edition of this post.

Borchert stood between North 7th & 8th Streets, and Burleigh & Chambers Streets. The entire land area is now occupied by Interstate 43, the North-South Freeway, and entrance-and-exit ramps. It's in a bit of a rough neighborhood, so unless you're just that into baseball history, if you have to cross one item off your list, this is the one. Number 50 bus to Holton & Burleigh, then Number 60 bus, or walk 12 blocks west.

* Milwaukee Mile. This racetrack, on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair in suburban West Allis, is the oldest continuously-operating auto racetrack in the world. "But Mike," you say, "auto racing is not a sport. Why are you talking about it?" Because the track's infield was used as the Packers' main Milwaukee-area home from 1934 to 1951.

Seating 45,000, the stadium was nicknamed the Dairy Bowl for Packer games, including the 1939 NFL Championship Game, in which the Packers beat the Giants, 27-0. The Milwaukee Chiefs of the 1940-41 version of the American Football League also played here.

I don't know if this is the earliest remaining stadium to have hosted an NFL game (1933), but it's almost certainly the oldest site (racing began there in to 1903). 7722 W. Greenfield Avenue at 77th Street. Number 60 bus to 60th & Vliet Streets, then transfer to Number 76 bus.

* Bucks arenas. The Milwaukee arenas, across State Street from each other at 4th Street, are loaded with history. The old one, built in 1951, now known as the U.S. Cellular Arena, was originally known as the Milwaukee Arena, then from 1974 to 1995 as the Milwaukee Exposition Convention Center and Arena (or MECCA). Two NBA teams called it home: The Milwaukee Hawks from 1951 to 1955, before moving to St. Louis (and later to Atlanta); and the Milwaukee Bucks from their debut in 1968 until 1988.

The Bucks played their 1971 NBA Championship season, their only title, there, although they clinched on the road in Baltimore. The Milwaukee Admirals, a minor-league hockey team, played here from 1973 to 1988, and won the 1976 United States Hockey League title.

Elvis Presley sang here on June 28, 1974 and April 27, 1977. The Beatles played here on September 4, 1964. The inductees to the previously mentioned Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame are honored here in a Wisconsin Athletic Walk of Fame, which also includes Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Bucks, Wisconsin Badgers, and State natives who made it big elsewhere.

The MECCA, with the Bradley Center behind it

The BMO Harris Bradley Center, was the Bucks' home from 1988 until this past season. While they've usually been good, they didn't reach the NBA Finals from 1974 (at the MECCA) or even the Conference Finals from 2001 (at the Bradley Center) until they won the title in 2021. The Admirals also call the Bradley Center home, and won the 2004 Calder Cup here. Marquette University, which reach the 1974 NCAA National Championship and won it in 1977, also played at the Bradley Center, after having played at the MECCA, and before that at the site I'm about to mention.

The University of Wisconsin, in Madison, is the only other Wisconsin school to reach the Final Four, and that was all the way back in 1941, although they've reached hockey's version, the Frozen Four, many times.

The Bradley Center, like a lot of NBA and NHL arenas that have recently been replaced or are about to be, opened right before Baltimore's ballpark, Camden Yards, rewrote the rules for stadium and arena construction. As a result, while the Bradley Center was in good shape and has good sight lines, it does not have lots of revenue-generation luxury boxes. And, with Milwaukee being a small market (only the Packers' special status keeps Wisconsin capable of supporting an NFL team, and the Brewers were in serious trouble in the 1990s before Miller Park opened), the Bucks need those luxury boxes.

For that reason, a new arena named the Fiserv Forum opened in 2018, just to the northwest of the Bradley Center, at 5th Street & Highland Avenue. The Bucks and Marquette basketball moved in. The Bradley Center has been demolished, while the MECCA will remain standing due to its historical significance.

The new arena, nearing completion,

with the Bradley Center and the MECCA to the right,

and the Milwaukee skyline in the background.

The nearest NHL team is the Chicago Blackhawks, 93 miles away. If Milwaukee had an NHL team, it would rank 25th in population among NHL markets. The nearest MLS team is the Chicago Fire, 96 miles away. Wisconsin's highest-ranking soccer team is Milwaukee Bavarian FC, which is only at the 5th level of the U.S. soccer pyramid, although they have been in business since 1929. They play at the 2,000-seat Heartland Value Fund Stadium. 700 W. Lexington Blvd. in Glendale, 6 miles north of downtown. Bus 15.

Horlick Field opened in 1907, and hosted the Racine Legion from 1919 to 1924 (including 1922 to '24 in the NFL), the NFL's Racine Tornadoes in 1926, and the Racine Belles of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1943 to 1950. The current 8,500-seat stadium on the site hosts high school sports. 1648 N. Memorial Drive in Racine, Wisconsin, 29 miles south of downtown Milwaukee, and 70 miles north of Chicago's Loop. Amtrak from either to Sturtevant, then Bus 8.

The Kenosha Maroons played in the NFL in 1924, at Nash Field. The 5,000-seat stadium also hosts high school sports. 5909 56th Street in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Even though it's closer to Milwaukee (34 miles as opposed to 60), it can only be reached by public transportation from Chicago, riding the train from the Ogilvie Transportation Center (the former Northwestern Station) to Kenosha, then Bus 2.

The Sheboygan Red Skins played pro basketball from 1933 to 1952, winning the National Basketball League title in 1943 (making them, technically, if not officially recognized by the NBA, World Champions in the sport), and were merged into the NBA for the 1949-50 season.

Due to Sheboygan's small size (about 50,000 people, smaller even than since-abandoned NBA cities Syracuse, Rochester and Fort Wayne), the rest of the league wanted them out, and got their wish. They lasted only 2 years in their new league, and folded. But they are still winners of a World Championship. They played at the 3,974-seat Sheboygan Municipal Auditorium and Armory, 58 miles north of Milwaukee (Bus 916) and 67 miles south of Green Bay.

Wisconsin, let alone Milwaukee, has never produced a President -- although, in 2012, Congressman Paul Ryan, now the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was the Republican nominee for Vice President, and he's now the Speaker of the House, and still fairly young by political standards, so he could run for President in the future.

The Milwaukee Auditorium, built in 1909 at 500 W. Kilbourn Avenue downtown (across from the MECCA), has been one of the city's most historic sites. It's where Theodore Roosevelt, running to return to the Presidency on the Progressive Party ticket in 1912, gave a speech on October 14. For an hour and a half. After having been shot.

The shooting happened a block away, at the Hotel Gilpatrick. The Hyatt was built on the site, at 333 W. Kilbourn. TR recovered, and finished 2nd to Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, but ahead of incumbent Republican William Howard Taft.

Other Presidents, and men who tried to be, spoke at the 4,000-seat building now named the Milwaukee Theatre: Taft in 1911, Wilson in 1916, Wendell Willkie in 1944, John F. Kennedy in 1960, Michael Dukakis in 1988, and the George Bushes, the father in 1991 and the son in 2000. Martin Luther King gave a noted speech there in 1964.

Elvis sang there on June 14, and 15, 1972, even though the MECCA was already an established arena. Other Wisconsin arenas to have been played by Elvis were the Mary E. Sawyer Auditorium in La Crosse on May 14, 1956; the Dane County Coliseum in Madison on October 19, 1976 and June 24, 1977; and the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena in Green Bay on April 28, 1977.

* Happy Days. Airing from 1974 to 1984 but taking place in Milwaukee from 1955 to 1965, this ABC sitcom did as much to make Milwaukee famous as beer and the Braves did. A statue of Henry Winkler as Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli -- a.k.a. The Bronze Fonz -- is at 117 E. Wells Street, on the Riverwalk, across from the 1895-built, 353-foot-high City Hall, which will be recognized by fans of Happy Days' spinoff series, Laverne & Shirley, although the sign saying, "WELCOME MILWAUKEE VISITORS" is long-gone.

Henry Winkler with the Bronze Fonz

The Cunningham house was said to be at 565 North Clinton Drive, an address which does not actually exist in the Milwaukee area. The exterior was shot in Los Angeles, near the Paramount Pictures studios. Both the original building used as the exterior for Arnold's, in the Milwaukee suburbs, and its replacement, in Los Angeles, have been demolished. The exterior shot for Richie and Joanie's alma mater, Jefferson High School, was filmed at Milwaukee's Washington High at 2525 N. Sherman Blvd.

Wisconsin was the location of 2 other famous nostalgia-based TV shows: The Happy Days spinoff
Laverne & Shirley, running from 1976 to 1983, and set in Milwaukee from 1957 to 1964, before moving to Los Angeles for 1965 to 1967; and That '70s Show, airing 1998 to 2006, but set from 1976 to 1979, in fictional Point Place, a name that may have been based on the real town of Stevens Point, but said to be a suburb of Green Bay.

The Dairy State/Badger State was also the location of the 1990s CBS drama Picket Fences, set in the small town of Rome, which is the name of a real town in Wisconsin; the 1990s ABC sitcom Step By Step, set in a fictionalized version of a real Wisconsin town, Port Washington, not to be confused with the town of the same name on Long Island; and the longtime CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless, set in Genoa City, which is the name of a small town on the Wisconsin-Illinois State Line, but, on the show, we are led to believe it is a much larger city.

Milwaukee doesn't have museums on the level of New York, Philadelphia or Chicago, but of note is the Milwaukee Public Museum, at 800 W. Wells Street, at 8th Street downtown. The Milwaukee Art Museum is on the lake, at 700 N. Art Museum Drive, off E. Mason Street. If you're a motorcycle enthusiast, the Harley-Davidson Museum -- Brewtown is also Harley's headquarters, and also that of lawnmower and farm equipment manufacturer Briggs & Stratton -- is at 400 W. Canal Street, right about where the city's 3 rivers meet. Number 80 bus gets the closest.

The tallest building in Wisconsin is the U.S. Bank Center, formerly the First Wisconsin Center, at 777 E. Wisconsin Avenue & N. Van Buren Street. Opening in 1973, it is 601 feet high.  It's not much to look at, unlike the building it replaced as such, City Hall.

If you want to go on a brewery tour, be my guest -- or, rather, put your money down and be their
guest. But I have no interest in it, so you'll have to look up your own info.

*

Milwaukee may not be one of America's biggest cities, but it's one of the most fun.  And sports, including baseball, is a big part of it. A Brewers game is a good time, whether the team is good or not.