Milwaukee Brewers at 50 by Adam McCalvy

Milwaukee Brewers at 50 by Adam McCalvy

Author:Adam McCalvy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00


The longtime faces of Brewers baseball: Jim Gantner, Paul Molitor, and Robin Yount when Molitor returned with the Blue Jays in 1993. The threesome combined to amass 6,401 total hits from 1978 to 1992, the most hits for a trio of teammates in baseball history.

A banner at the back row of the left-field bleachers marked “Vaughn’s Valley,” where slugging left fielder Greg Vaughn deposited many of his 169 home runs for the Brewers from 1989 to 1996.

The off-season, however, was not much fun at all. From a baseball perspective, keeping Molitor was a no-brainer; he was coming off two of the best—and healthiest—seasons of his career, including a 1991 season in which he led the majors with 216 hits and 133 runs scored. In ’92, Molitor’s contract year, he batted .320 and topped 700 plate appearances for the second straight season. But from an economic perspective, Molitor’s former teammate-turned-GM Bando was in a difficult spot entering his first full off-season on the job. The Brewers couldn’t match Toronto’s three-year, $13 million offer.

“It was the apex of conversations about big market/small market,” Molitor said. “[Selig] was very candid with me during those negotiations. It probably felt a little personal at the time. But anything that was cracked was patched over time.”

“I mean, it was just a tough time,” Bando said.

It was the beginning of the end of an era. Gantner underwent shoulder surgery that off-season, which effectively ended his career. He finished as one of the AL’s all-time leaders in fielding percentage at second base (.985). Yount played one more year in 1993 before calling it a career after 20 seasons with the Brewers.

“For me as a fan, it was always those three guys,” said Wendy Selig-Prieb, who had joined her father’s front office as general counsel in 1990. “So even at the time, did we all see it as a really dramatic end to what had been beyond an extraordinary chapter? Yeah. It’s always easy in hindsight, but I think we understood the magnitude then. You had to see it in the context of a broader perspective—we had that at the same time you had such despair over the economics of the game and the lack of competitive balance and parity within the game. In my mind, as I think back on that time, that was the challenge.”

The challenge was just beginning.

The 1993 season marked the first of 12 consecutive sub-.500 finishes for the Brewers, who did have their bright spots along the way during the 1990s. In ’91, they drafted an energetic infielder in the 11th round who became one of the toughest outs in franchise history—Jeff Cirillo hit .325 in 1996, .321 in ’98, and .326 in ’99 while topping 600 plate appearances each year. At the time, they were three of the top 11 batting averages in franchise history. Slugging outfielder Greg Vaughn—“The identity of our team,” Cirillo said—made two All-Star Games and twice topped 30 home runs for the Brewers, including a partial ’96 season during which he was traded to San Diego.



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