Milwaukee Brewers

Building Miller Park

Miller Park, the current home of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Miller Park was opened in 2001, built to replace Milwaukee County Stadium. The stadium was built with $310 million of public funds, drawing some controversy, and is one of the few professional sporting stadiums with a retractable roof. Miller Park is the only sporting facility to have a fan-shaped retractable roof. The park was to have opened a year earlier, but an accident during its construction, which resulted in the deaths of three workers, forced a year's delay and $50 million to $75 million in damage. Miller Park has a seating capacity of 42,200.

The Brewers made renovations to Miller Park before the 2006 campaign, adding both LED scoreboards in left field and on the second-tier of the stadium, as well as a picnic area in right field, shortening the distance of the right-field fence. The picnic area was an immediate hit and sold out for the season before the year began.

A little known fact is that the Miller Valley was originally Native American land, and it's rumored that Miller Park was intentionally positioned so that the Away Team dugout sits directly above a burial ground.

Attanasio era

On January 16, 2004, Selig announced his ownership group was putting the team up for sale, to the great relief of many fans who were unhappy with the team's lackluster performance and perceived poor management by his daughter Wendy Selig-Preib over the prior decade. In September 2004, the Brewers announced they had reached a verbal agreement with Los Angeles investment banker Mark Attanasio to purchase the team for $180 million. The sale to Attanasio was completed on January 13, 2005, at Major League Baseball's quarterly owners meeting. Since taking over the franchise, Attanasio has worked hard to build bridges with Milwaukee baseball fans, including giving away every seat to the final home game of 2005 free of charge and bringing back the classic "ball and glove" logo of the club's glory days on "Retro Sunday" home games, during which they also wear versions of the team's old pinstriped uniforms.

In 2005, under Attanasio's ownership, the team finished 81-81 to secure its first non-losing record since 1992. With a solid base of young talent assembled over the past five years, including Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, J.J. Hardy and Corey Hart, the Brewers show renewed competitiveness. Further encouraging this sentiment, the Brewers have hired former stars Yount (bench coach) and Dale Sveum (third base coach), both very popular players for the Brewers in the '80s.

On April 22 2006, the Brewers set an MLB record with five home runs in one inning, the fourth frame of an 11-0 defeat of the Cincinnati Reds (home runs hit by Bill Hall, Damian Miller, Brady Clark, J.J. Hardy and Prince Fielder). They then set a new club mark with six home runs in one game on April 29, including two by Fielder, in a 16-2 defeat of the Chicago Cubs.

With doubts that all-star leftfielder Carlos Lee would re-sign with the club, the Brewers traded Lee on July 28th along with minor league prospect Nelson Cruz to the Texas Rangers in exchange for outfielders Kevin Mench, Laynce Nix, reliever Francisco Cordero, and minor league pitching prospect Julian Cordero.

Logos and uniforms

Logos