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In 1984, club president Tony Ramos announced the formation of an indoor soccer franchise known as the Milwaukee Wave. The Wave have played their home games at various locations, including the Milwaukee Auditorium, the Bradley Center, and the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena. Although mired near the bottom of the American Indoor Soccer Association ranks for… Read More

Whether fabricating color-matched dirt for a layout or studying U.S. topographical reports to achieve a precise scale, model railroaders strive for accuracy and authenticity. While there are a number of cities that boast clubs and manufacturers, Milwaukee is arguably the historical headquarters of model railroading. One of the nation’s oldest model railroading organizations, the Model… Read More

The Pettit National Ice Center hosts international speed skating competitions, offers HOCKEY and ICE SKATING lessons and leagues for children and adults, and is an official United States training site for Olympic speed skating. Since the Ice Center’s opening in 1992, all U.S. speed skaters who have participated in the Winter Olympics have competed or… Read More

Robert George “Bob” Uecker is best known as a Milwaukee Brewers’ radio broadcaster, but he also has gained fame as a national baseball commentator, actor, author, and commercial spokesman. Born in Milwaukee on January 26, 1935, Uecker grew up watching the minor league Milwaukee Brewers at Borchert Field and aspired to a professional baseball career.… Read More

Drafted at age eighteen, Robin Yount became an everyday starter for the Milwaukee Brewers in his first season and played his entire major league baseball career (1974-1993) with the Brewers. Yount led the team to the World Series in 1982 and earned two league MVP awards (shortstop, 1982; centerfield, 1989). Collecting more hits during the… Read More

Numerous annual races serve as fundraisers for local charities and organizations. One of the largest of these, Briggs & Al’s Run & Walk for Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, has raised over $14 million since its first running in 1977. The Milwaukee County Zoo’s Samson Stomp & Romp was first run in 1981; its proceeds benefit… Read More

Sheepshead is a popular American card game that originated in Central Europe during the eighteenth century. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the first major wave of European immigrants arrived in the United States. While the city of Milwaukee attracted immigrants of all kinds, Germans quickly became the largest immigrant population in the city;… Read More

Metropolitan Milwaukee boasts a rich history of youth, amateur, and semiprofessional soccer programs. It can even lay claim to holding the first recorded match in the United States, a challenge between Carroll College students and Waukesha youths in 1866. By the early twentieth century, clubs in the city of Milwaukee formed among immigrants in ethnic… Read More

For most American sports fans, tailgating brings to mind cool fall days, with smoke wafting through the parking lot in the hours before kickoff. However, for MILWAUKEE BREWERS fans, tailgating is the public manner in which one eats, drinks, plays, and socializes before the first pitch at Miller Park, where the parking lots function as… Read More

According to the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, “Up North” is a relative term, more of a state of mind than an actual place. That’s especially true for people from Milwaukee. The Movoto travel guide states, “if a Milwaukeean says they’re headed ‘up north’ for the weekend, it means they’re taking a few days to simply… Read More

The Milwaukee Arena was the city’s major sports and entertainment facility when it opened in 1950. The Arena was home to Milwaukee’s first National Basketball Association team, the Hawks, and hosted events including the Tripoli Shrine Circus, Holiday on Ice, and orchestra concerts. One of the nation’s first venues designed to accommodate television broadcasting, the… Read More

The Wisconsin State Fair is an annual, eleven-day festival that celebrates Wisconsin farming, livestock, and agricultural products. The first Wisconsin State Fair took place in 1851, along the Rock River in Janesville. The fair lasted only two days, and 13,000-18,000 patrons attended the festivities. Over the next forty years the fair moved to various locations… Read More