Borchert Field
Stories from Milwaukee’s Legendary Ballpark
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Narrated by:
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Brian Geller
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By:
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Bob Buege
About this listen
Someone lucky enough to live on Milwaukee's near north side between 1888 and 1952 could experience the world without ever leaving the neighborhood. Nestled between North Seventh and Eighth Streets and West Chambers and Burleigh, Borchert Field was Milwaukee's major sports venue for 64 years. In this rickety wooden stadium (originally called Athletic Park), Wisconsin residents had a close-up view of sports history in the making, along with rodeos, thrill shows, and even multiple eruptions of Mount Vesuvius.
In Borchert Field, baseball historian Bob Buege introduces the famous and fascinating athletes who dazzled audiences in Milwaukee's venerable ballpark. All the legendary baseball figures - the Bambino, Satchel Paige, Ty Cobb, Joltin' Joe, Jackie Robinson, the Say Hey Kid - played there. Olympic heroes Jim Thorpe, Babe Didrikson, and Jesse Owens displayed their amazing talents in Borchert. Knute Rockne's Fighting Irish competed there, and Curly Lambeau's Green Bay Packers took the field 10 times.
Buege tells stories of other monumental moments at Borchert as well, including a presidential visit, women ballplayers, the arrival of television broadcasting, the 1922 national balloon race, and an appearance by scat-singing bandleader Cab Calloway.
Borchert Field is long gone, but every moment of this audiobook takes listeners back to the sights, sounds, and spectacle of its heyday.
©2017 Bob Buege (P)2018 Wisconsin Historical Society PressListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
For 53 years, San Francisco waited. Waited for a team like the 2010 Giants to come along. Waited for a team that could end a title drought that started in New York and carried on for more than five decades after a move to the West Coast. Waited for that one magical postseason run that could unleash more than a half-century of pent-up frustration. At long last, the 2010 Giants hopped on that magic carpet and made it happen. San Jose Mercury News beat reporter Andrew Baggarly captured the 2010 Giants' incredible run through the regular season, playoffs and World Series in his new book.
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Relived that season!
- By jeff olson on 12-20-18
By: Andrew Baggarly
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The Grandest Stage
- A History of the World Series
- By: Tyler Kepner
- Narrated by: Tyler Kepner
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The World Series is the most enduring showcase in American team sports. It’s the place where legends are made, where celebration and devastation can hinge on a fly ball off a foul pole or a grounder beneath a first baseman’s glove. And there’s no one better to bring this rich history to life than New York Times national baseball columnist Tyler Kepner, whose bestselling book about pitching, K, was lauded as “Michelangelo explaining the brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel” by Newsday.
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Excellent!
- By DavidF on 09-09-24
By: Tyler Kepner
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Our Team
- The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball
- By: Luke Epplin
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The riveting story of four men - Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige - whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond.
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Who will like this book?
- By Brian L. Quarton on 04-03-21
By: Luke Epplin
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The Summer of Beer and Whiskey
- How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America's Game
- By: Edward Achorn
- Narrated by: Ax Norman
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Chris Von der Ahe knew next to nothing about baseball when he risked his life’s savings to found the St. Louis Browns, the franchise that would become the St. Louis Cardinals. Yet the German-born beer garden proprietor would become one of the most important - and funniest - figures in the game’s history.
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Well written and extensive research but just not interesting
- By Samuel C on 07-30-20
By: Edward Achorn
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The Captain
- The Journey of Derek Jeter
- By: Ian O'Connor
- Narrated by: Nick Pollifrone
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stance and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the world’s most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn’t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America’s game.
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Great book, terrible narrator.
- By Butter on 05-09-14
By: Ian O'Connor
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Babe
- The Legend Comes to Life
- By: Robert W. Creamer
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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He was the biggest man baseball has ever produced. Babe Ruth transcended the sport that brought him fame, money, and adulation, moving beyond the limits of baselines and outfield fences into the mainstream of American life. In this extraordinary biography, Creamer uncovers the complex and captivating man behind the legend.
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The definitive biography of Babe Ruth
- By DKT on 05-30-16
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Ty Cobb
- A Terrible Beauty
- By: Charles Leerhsen
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don't tell half of Cobb's tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: "Ty Cobb could cause more excitement with a base on balls than Babe Ruth could with a grand slam," one columnist wrote.
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Two Cobb Books, One Review of a Maligned Legacy
- By Jonathan Love on 05-17-16
By: Charles Leerhsen
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The Last Innocents
- The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers
- By: Michael Leahy
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Legendary Dodgers Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Wes Parker, Jeff Torborg, Dick Tracewski, and Tommy Davis encapsulated 1960s America: white and black, Jewish and Christian, wealthy and working class, pro-Vietnam and anti-war, golden boy and seasoned veteran. The Last Innocents is a thoughtful, technicolor portrait of these seven players - friends, mentors, confidants, rivals, and allies - and their storied team that offers an intriguing look at a sport and a nation in transition.
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Reliving my youth
- By PJ on 05-24-17
By: Michael Leahy
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Fall from Grace
- The Truth and Tragedy of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson
- By: Tim Hornbaker
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Considered by Ty Cobb as the "finest natural hitter in the history of the game," "Shoeless Joe" Jackson is ranked with the greatest players to ever step onto a baseball diamond. With a career .356 batting average - which is still ranked third all-time - the man from Pickens County, South Carolina, was on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the sport's history. That is until the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, which shook baseball to its core.
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Entertaining and Educational
- By Colorfinger on 06-14-19
By: Tim Hornbaker
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A Nice Little Place on the North Side
- Wrigley Field at One Hundred
- By: George Will
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Nice Little Place on the North Side, leading columnist George Will returns to baseball with a deeply personal look at his hapless Chicago Cubs and their often beatified home, Wrigley Field, as it enters its second century. Baseball, Will argues, is full of metaphors for life, religion, and happiness, and Wrigley is considered one of its sacred spaces. But what is its true, hyperbole-free history?
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It's EEE-lia, not Ah-LEE-ah
- By Shawcago on 04-25-16
By: George Will
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Ten Innings at Wrigley
- The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink
- By: Kevin Cook
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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It was a Thursday at Chicago's Wrigley Field, mostly sunny with the wind blowing out. Nobody expected an afternoon game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs on May 17, 1979, to be much more than a lazy early-season contest matching two teams heading in opposite directions - the first-place Phillies and the Cubs, those lovable losers - until they combined for 13 runs in the first inning. Ten Innings at Wrigley is Kevin Cook's vivid account of a game that could only have happened at this ballpark, in this era, with this colorful cast of heroes and heels.
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The Baseball stars of my youth
- By Hebern on 05-26-20
By: Kevin Cook
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Opening Day
- The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration's promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball's ultimate story.
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Great book, not so great reading
- By Joe Baseball on 08-30-07
By: Jonathan Eig