On Friday’s podcast I referred to a book by an incorrect title, an embarrassing error with an unfortunate corollary in my own life. The name of the book is Bushville Wins!, the story of the early days of the Milwaukee Braves. (The full subtitle is The Wild Saga of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and the Screwballs, Sluggers, and Beer Swiggers Who Canned the New York Yankees and Changed Baseball.) On Math and Musings I couldn’t even remember the two-word title, mistakenly referring to the work simply as “Bushville,” rather than “Bushville Wins.” Small detail, I know, but when someone calls Wallpaper Jam simply “Wallpaper” I’m mildly upset they miss out on the clever (IMO) pun.
Long-winded way to come around to saying the book is great, and though now 10 years old still a timely read. The “Bushville” in question is the aforementioned Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and its baseball team, a band of country rubes compared to the sophisticated fans and stars of the New York Yankees. (They sip Manhattans and they live there too.) Even though the team of my youth is the villain in the story, the story is compelling nonetheless. And I now have a soft spot in my heart for the Milwaukee Braves, a team that existed for only 13 major league seasons.
Which brings me to book #2 on my summer reading list: Clayton Trutor’s Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta–and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports. The “Loserville” detailed is in fact Atlanta, a city that was the beneficiary of the Braves’ move from Milwaukee in 1966. This was the first major league team from Atlanta among the “Big 4” of American sports; by 1972 they had teams in each league.
Much of the financing and professional wrangling to secure these teams (Braves, Falcons, Hawks, and Flames) went through public funding sources. As in, like, the government was responsible for building the arenas and securing the dough. Kind of the first time it occurred on this scale, though now it’s standard procedure. Basically before the Atlanta model it was rich guys building stadiums themselves; now it’s corporations in league with state and local governments. Trutor goes into a bit more detail (the man does have a PhD and teaches this stuff at the college level), so the book is therefore several hundred pages of kind of weighty reading. There are side plots of racism and public accommodations regarding such, of course, and thoughtful cost-benefit analyses of public investment in entertainment. If you can handle more than just sports, the book is for you. And Loserville? Well, Losers for a long time in pretty much every sport, but the Braves did win 14 straight division titles in non-strike years from ’91 to 2005.
Not as cool as Milwaukee in the ’50s, but they did win the World Series last year.