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Robin Yount

Sepia-colored headshot of Robin Yount from the chest up in a Milwaukee Brewers' jersey and hat. He smiles and makes eye contact with the camera lens.
Drafted at age eighteen, Robin Yount became an everyday starter for the Milwaukee Brewers in his first season and played his entire major league baseball career (1974-1993) with the Brewers. Yount led the team to the World Series in 1982 and earned two league MVP awards (shortstop, 1982; centerfield, 1989). Collecting more hits during the… Read More

Roller Derby

Five BrewCity Bruisers skaters and two players of Cincinnati Rollergirls Black Sheep compete on a flat track. The BrewCity Bruisers team is in predominantly gold and red-colored uniforms. Its rival is in white and black jerseys. Spectators sit in the far background.
Roller derby was a sports entertainment phenomenon in the 1950s, gained a new generation of fans via television in the 1970s, and underwent a twenty-first century resurgence with a feminist impulse. As part of this third wave of organized roller derby, the BrewCity Bruisers began holding “bouts” in 2006 at the Milwaukee County Sports Complex.… Read More

Roller Skating

Grayscale long shot of three children roller skating down a Milwaukee street. The boy in the middle holds hands with the girls on his left and right. A car appears behind them. Other vehicles parked on the road are visible in the background. Residential places are on the street's left side. A multi-story building is on the street's right side. Tall trees can be seen in the background.
From 1900 through the 1940s, Milwaukee’s well-to-do often laced up their roller skates for an evening of “fashionable amusement” at the local skating rinks, most notably the Riverview and the Palomar. The former, overlooking the Milwaukee River on North Avenue, offered ladies’ instruction in both plain and fancy skating in the afternoon and hosted the… Read More

Running

A large crowd of runners stand on a street in a ready position behind the starting line of the Briggs & Al's Run and Walk. A crowd of spectators stands along the sidewalk on the left. Tall green trees grow on the road verges and multi-story buildings are visible in the background.
Numerous annual races serve as fundraisers for local charities and organizations. One of the largest of these, Briggs & Al’s Run & Walk for Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, has raised over $14 million since its first running in 1977. The Milwaukee County Zoo’s Samson Stomp & Romp was first run in 1981; its proceeds benefit… Read More

Sandlot Baseball

Ten men stand in a row in baseball uniforms that feature the word "Kosciuszko." Some wear jackets and baseball gloves. Behind them are a bunch of men in suits posing for this photograph.
From the turn of the twentieth century until the years immediately following World War II, grassroots baseball built around local teams and leagues was an important participatory and spectator sport in Milwaukee and in other major northeastern and midwestern cities. Operating below the level of full-fledged professionalism, the game played by these teams was commonly… Read More

Sheepshead

Long shot of a banner reads "Sheepshead" hanging on the outside of a white-colored tent in the background. A gigantic printed art depicting the Queen of Clubs card appears in the image's foreground.
Sheepshead is a popular American card game that originated in Central Europe during the eighteenth century. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the first major wave of European immigrants arrived in the United States. While the city of Milwaukee attracted immigrants of all kinds, Germans quickly became the largest immigrant population in the city;… Read More

Skateboarding

Full shot of a skateboarder in a hat and jeans pants bending their body while doing a flip trick at the indoor Cream City Skate Park. Two people are visible in the distance. The ceiling's steel structure, a skate ramp, a wall, and a mural that reads "Cream City" appear in the background.
A California import, skateboarding appeared in Milwaukee in the 1960s and rose in popularity in the 1970s. Local authorities perceived skating as dangerous and wasted little time banning it from most public places. According to contemporary accounts, this led to confrontations between skaters and authorities, which supported skateboarding’s outsider image. Nevertheless, skaters careened down the… Read More

Soccer

Full shot of two University of Wisconsin's women's soccer team players in red jerseys and their opponent from Marquette University in a yellow shirt running to the left. Kate Gordon of Marquette University is on the image's right. Her opponents are on the left. Other players and green trees are visible in the background. They play on a green field in daylight.
Metropolitan Milwaukee boasts a rich history of youth, amateur, and semiprofessional soccer programs. It can even lay claim to holding the first recorded match in the United States, a challenge between Carroll College students and Waukesha youths in 1866. By the early twentieth century, clubs in the city of Milwaukee formed among immigrants in ethnic… Read More

Summerfest

Grayscale elevated view of the Summerfest grounds. Groups of people walk toward the festival entry point in the left foreground. Booths and tents are here and there around the area that borders Lake Michigan in the far background. A large crowd appears in the center-right. Other people are scattered around the booths. A sign in an unusual font reads "summerfest 72."
Launched in 1968, Summerfest is a multi-day event held in June and July featuring music, food, shopping, and family activities that bring more than 800,000 people to the Henry W. Maier Festival Park on the Milwaukee lakefront. Billed as “The World’s Largest Music Festival” by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1999, fans of… Read More

Tailgating

A tilted photo of a crowd of people gathering outdoors in daylight. A group stand in the foreground. Behind them are several people sitting on tailgate chairs. Some carry food or beverages. More people appear in the background, standing among parked buses and cars. The stadium is visible on the far left back. Blue sky is above.
For most American sports fans, tailgating brings to mind cool fall days, with smoke wafting through the parking lot in the hours before kickoff. However, for MILWAUKEE BREWERS fans, tailgating is the public manner in which one eats, drinks, plays, and socializes before the first pitch at Miller Park, where the parking lots function as… Read More

Taverns

Grayscale long shot of a tavern's interior with tables and chairs in the left foreground, the bar and stools in the background. A group of people sitting on stools and two people standing behind the bar make eye contact with the camera. Shelves with bottles of liquor are visible in the back. A clock on the wall reads 10:40 and daylight is visible through the window.
Milwaukee’s taverns were shaped by complex societal changes and largely defined by the lasting influence of the city’s large German population and significant brewing industry. Scattered along networks of dirt and plank roads connecting small settlements in Milwaukee and its surrounding counties, early wayside taverns were more than simply a place to get a drink.… Read More

Tennis

Grayscale long shot of a tennis team in Victorian sportswears posing in an outdoor court. Some carry tennis racquets. People in the front sit on the ground. A line of buildings is visible in the far background.
Tennis traces its roots back to the early 1300s, but it emerged in its modern form as “lawn tennis” in England in 1874. The sport became immensely popular with the upper middle classes, who were challenging the power of the old aristocracy in the late Victorian era. The surging bourgeoisie still aped the ways of… Read More

Up North

Grayscale long shot of Rudolph and Alice Gruettner waving from a boat floating on Rice Creek. Weathered tree trunks appear on the surface of the water in the image's foreground. Tall lush trees grow along the bank in the far background.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, “Up North” is a relative term, more of a state of mind than an actual place. That’s especially true for people from Milwaukee. The Movoto travel guide states, “if a Milwaukeean says they’re headed ‘up north’ for the weekend, it means they’re taking a few days to simply… Read More

UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena

Long shot of the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena sitting on a street corner. The image shows the facade and side. The facade face to the left. The building's name sign and logo appear on the top front of the structure. Red bricks compose the building, topped with a large arched roof. A large street stretches from left to right in the foreground.
The Milwaukee Arena was the city’s major sports and entertainment facility when it opened in 1950. The Arena was home to Milwaukee’s first National Basketball Association team, the Hawks, and hosted events including the Tripoli Shrine Circus, Holiday on Ice, and orchestra concerts. One of the nation’s first venues designed to accommodate television broadcasting, the… Read More

Wisconsin State Fair

Four bakers in uniforms stand on the left while showing trays filled with cream puffs to the fair attendees on the right. Several attendees lean on the long counter table that separates them from the bakers.
The Wisconsin State Fair is an annual, eleven-day festival that celebrates Wisconsin farming, livestock, and agricultural products. The first Wisconsin State Fair took place in 1851, along the Rock River in Janesville. The fair lasted only two days, and 13,000-18,000 patrons attended the festivities. Over the next forty years the fair moved to various locations… Read More