I couldn’t sleep — again. Nothing, everything on my mind.
Something was calling.
So downstairs I went, showered, made coffee, stealing into the pre-dawn dark for a dose of medicine that rarely fails — the neighborhood.
My block and neighborhood were still, Silver City dreaming, serene. I stepped off my stoop, past familiar front yards and facades, through interminable construction and beloved parks, to the Valley.
This morning was not a usual morning.
I said “hello” to the Menomonee River in the dark, where researchers are experimenting with returning wild rice to its home for the first time in generations. I said “hello” to Falk and the factories, once plentiful and messy.
The call became louder
One time, I thought I saw Yovani Gallardo jogging near the river in Three Bridges Park. Another time, when my girlfriend (now wife) walked home from a game to our apartment on a hot night, I remember feeling bliss, an extra in the opera of the city.
My path snaked along the Menomonee River, into one of the most sacred parking lots in all of sports. Tabula rasa, a tailgate waiting to happen. This morning, two coyotes scampered across the expanse, only noticing me enough to tell I was on a mission.
A stream of morning light roused, a seam of sorbet parting the clouds. I looked up at the stadium.
My dad taught me to love baseball, which he also learned as a kid. He was an Irishman and a lawyer, working long hours, finding scraps of time for a game whenever he could. Youngest of five, I was the sidekick. A stop at Sentry to pick up a bag of peanuts (real Brewers fans are thrifty), then to County Stadium to hunt for the cheapest (or second cheapest) tickets. Why break the bank if Shangri-La will open its gates for five dollars?
The bleacher creatures
In those days, the bleachers were boisterous, bawdy and perfect. I loved to eavesdrop while the guys around us jawed, salty language and sweet suds keeping the conversation afloat. Especially on cold fall nights, just when the crowd needed it, the right jock jam between innings would get Mike “Freeway” McCarter dancing. And, of course, we’d all lose it when he lost his shirt.
Walking the perimeter of the stadium, dissonance, as it often does, flooded my mind.
Loving the Brewers, like Milwaukee, was not easy during my childhood. Plenty of players and personalities, but for our small-market team, a winning record felt like a prayer. I learned tough love and to hold my head high, even when we don’t win. In my adulthood, the Brewers have become a playoff fixture despite representing a post-industrial city, and as 2026 attests, not just a group of scrappers anymore.
The beautiful game
Baseball is sometimes beautiful, as can be the way our hometown team plays the game. Of course, the machinery of the sports business has grown more and more ugly. Arriving in middle age, I’m happy about what data and innovative minds can do for the game, but gambling and torrents of big-market money are cannibals.
So maybe these Brewers are the Rebels and everyone else the Empire? In Milwaukee, a conversation about sports — or anything — can turn to war, up in the stars or down here in the community.
As I reached the stadium’s face, the heated conversation in my head short-circuited, stopping me in my tracks.
Hammerin’ Hank and Ueck
I turned my neck to the left and saw a monument, up on a plinth — St. Henry. My mind went blank and my eyes welled with tears. I was on the verge of forgetting what called me to hallowed ground, when Hammerin’ Hank brought me back. I spent a moment meditating on his life in Milwaukee, a superhuman athlete, also a Black man.
I know Milwaukee was never solely “good” to this hero, and that morning I’d walked to the stadium on a path that bears his name — Hank Aaron State Trail. What he gave our city required not the love of a cartoon Instagram heart, but a strong, real, human heart.
Next stop, our dear, late Ueck. While Hank’s statue is frozen perpetually in his batting stance, Bob stands in plain clothing with his hands in his pockets and an easy smile. A larger-than-life, dyed-in-the-wool Milwaukee boy, Bob Uecker was born around 10th and Meinecke, in the footprint of what we call Bronzeville today. With infinite wit and some athletic talent, Uecker talked his way into immortality, a Milwaukee kid until the end. To this day, I still think he was underrated in “Mr. Belvedere.”
I paused and closed my eyes, listening for the call. It drifted through me, a song of good cheer. Levitating from my time at the shrines of heroes-past, my walk was interrupted, continuing its orbit around the stadium. Of course, by construction.
The Brewers are building an addition on the stadium’s west side named “The Truss,” which can be trusted to bring in the dollars that come with luxury amenities. Is it gentrification? It’s a baseball stadium, so I’m not sure what it’s displacing, but I caught more than a whiff. In fact, the project uses public funds and will be a private VIP for something or other.
Rather than turn back, I walked on the road and through the grass.
A team of locals
The Brewers are, as the die-hards point out, not a team that came out of nowhere. Still, we are a modest market club with a corresponding payroll. Milwaukee is a city of locals and the Brewers feel most authentic when they feel like a team of elite locals, baseball players who grew up playing on park diamonds and playground pickup games. Maybe that’s why Gary Sheffield never fit in.
The sky was bright by this point and I began back home, the city starting to rouse.
In 2021, I did a neighborhood bus tour for Christian Yelich’s mom and brother. Upon meeting her, we soon found we had something in common — we’re both biracial and half-Asian (she’s Japanese, we’re Chinese) with roots in California. From that moment, Yeli was basically a cousin in my eyes.
Truly, I couldn’t be more proud to see him grow up and become the team’s elder statesman. To that end, the tour was motivated by a donation Yelich made to Beckum Stapleton Little League, a treasure of Milwaukee’s North Side, where generations of boys and girls have grown up on the diamond.
After the World Series, personally, I hope Beckum Stapleton never needs to raise another finger or dollar to keep their facilities top-notch.
On to the World Series
Win or lose, from here forward, our guys have given us something to hold onto forever. They are Nyjer Morgan flying a kite on the lakefront. They are the countdown to Robin Yount’s 3,000th hit. They are the debut of Chorizo as a racing sausage.
The Brewers have captured Milwaukee’s imagination in a real way, a group of young men playing ball in 2026. Speaking as a father of a daughter and a neighborhood guy myself, we needed them exactly now.
To our home turf. To the saints who hold miracles in silence. To the divine rascals. To the neighborhood.
My heart to the team for answering the call.
Go Brewers!
Writer and former NNS staffer Adam Carr shares the story of a recent morning walk turned mystic quest, through the neighborhood and to the stadium. As he gets ready for the World Series to begin, he muses on neighborhoods, being a lifelong fan and what the Brewers mean to Milwaukee.
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