County Stadium, Milwaukee

County Stadium opened in 1953 as a concrete municipal ballpark on the site of an old stone quarry at the intersection of what would become the Stadium Freeway and Blue Mound Road. It was built to lure a major league team to Milwaukee, and it worked. The Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee before the 1953 season, and County Stadium became, almost overnight, one of the loudest and most enthusiastic parks in baseball.

Milwaukee embraced the Braves with a ferocity that startled the rest of the league. In their first season, the Braves drew 1.8 million fans, nearly tripling their final year's attendance in Boston. By 1957, they were drawing over 2.2 million and winning the World Series behind Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn, and Lew Burdette. Burdette won three complete games in the 1957 Series against the Yankees. The Braves returned to the Series in 1958 and lost to the Yankees in seven games.

Then attendance declined. By the mid-1960s, the Braves were drawing under a million fans. Owner Lou Perini had sold the team to a group that included future commissioner Bud Selig's family, but the new owners were eyeing a move to Atlanta, where television markets were larger and the political climate was more favorable. After the 1965 season, the Braves left Milwaukee for Atlanta. The departure was bitter. Selig, who had tried to keep the team, spent the next five years working to bring baseball back to Milwaukee.

He succeeded in 1970, when the bankrupt Seattle Pilots franchise was purchased by Selig's group and relocated to Milwaukee after just one season in the Pacific Northwest. The team was renamed the Brewers. County Stadium, which had sat mostly empty for four years, had baseball again.

The Brewers made County Stadium their home for the next three decades. Robin Yount played his entire 20-year career there, winning two MVP awards and collecting 3,142 hits. Paul Molitor hit in 39 consecutive games in 1987. The 1982 Brewers, known as "Harvey's Wallbangers" for their power-heavy lineup under manager Harvey Kuenn, won the American League pennant and took the Cardinals to seven games in the World Series.

County Stadium was a no-frills concrete bowl with open concourses and a parking lot that doubled as the best tailgating venue in baseball. Brewers fans, drawing on Wisconsin's bratwurst traditions, turned the parking lot into a pregame festival that rivaled anything in professional football. The smell of grilling sausage was as much a part of the County Stadium experience as the game itself.

The Brewers moved to Miller Park (now American Family Field) in 2001. County Stadium was demolished the same year. A home plate marker in the Miller Park parking lot marks the spot where the old diamond used to be.