Beer Barrel Man and Beyond

June 6, 2024 by Steve Myers 6 Comments

I don’t really care about uniforms which makes sense because I don’t really care about clothes, shoes or hats either. To me they serve a practical function, to keep us warm in winter, cool in the summer and hats? Good for keeping the sun off my head, not much else. But I do appreciate others who dress colorfully and applaud major league baseball for tying current teams to their histories with throwback uniforms and hats and promotions that link the present with the past even if it is all about money.

Beer Barrel Man

With that in mind, I liked the Brewers decision in 2015 to bring back Beer Barrel Man, newly named Barrel Man, the beloved mascot with the keg/barrel for a belly and tap for a nose symbolizing Milwaukee’s long obsession with beer, beginning with I would think German immigrants who brought their love of beer to Cream City aptly named because of the yellow or cream colored bricks used to construct local buildings in the early 19th century. The Irish helped too.

It seems that part of anyone’s initiation in Milwaukee involves beer and I’m surprised the drinking age isn’t 14! That’s the age I learned to enjoy beer or more specifically – enjoy the buzz, thanks to my friend’s older brothers who willingly bought us Old Style, Mickeys Malt, Miller, Schaefer, Busch, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Leinenkugels, Blatz. We didn’t care. We had no fancy palette. Don’t have one now either.

Just about everyone, at some point, drinks beer in Milwaukee and if they are Brewers fans, they find out early that going to a game at the old County Stadium and then at Miller Park and now American Family Field is more than watching Cecil Cooper’s crouched stance patterned after legendary Rod Carew or a Richie Sexson monumental blast or Willy Adames rifling a throw from shallow left field to first base. All of these examples are true, but so are hundreds of parties going on…barbecues and beer, tailgating in the parking lot before the game.

Owgust

The Brewers weren’t the first local team to make use of the beer barrel man. The minor league Milwaukee Brewers which existed from 1902 to 1952, at some point in apparently the 1940’s adopted a logo eventually called Owgust. I was unable to find the origins of the word, but it does resemble August and according to an etymology site, it means “worthy of respect, venerable, majestic” which is how I feel about most bartenders serving us beers. Owgust wasn’t represented just as a hitter. There were variations of hims as a pitcher, a fielder, a catcher, a base runner and a runner sliding into second.

    Borchert Field

The minor league Brewers were independent from 1902-1928, and than from 1929-1933, a St. Louis Browns affiliate, then independent again from 1934-1946 and lastly, an affiliate of the Boston Braves from 1947-1952.  They first played at Brewer Field, later renamed Borchert Field in 1920 after Otto Borchert, son of a….you guessed it, a brewing pioneer! They actually built County Stadium with the minor league Brewers in mind, but then Lou Perini announced that his MLB Boston Braves would be relocating to Milwaukee which was maybe the inspiration behind the Dodgers and Giants, later in the decade, relocating west? Anyway, it ended a half century of minor league baseball in Milwaukee. And the new MLB Braves? No, they didn’t adopt Owgust as a mascot and they only played 13 seasons in Milwaukee, but what seasons they were, all of them above .500 plus a World Series win in 1957 over the legendary Yanks and runner up the following year to those same Yanks.

The Braves eventually relocated again, to Atlanta to start the 1966 season so Milwaukee was without a team, but when the one year wonder Seattle Pilots supposedly went bankrupt after the 1969 season, Bud Selig swooped in and stole them away to Milwaukee to become the Brewers and it wasn’t long before Owgust was resurrected as the newly named Beer Barrel Man, until 1977 anyway. Then, came the ball and glove M and B (Milwaukee Brewers logo) and now we have the best of both worlds, both Barrel Man and the M and B glove, depending on the day. They even have throwback uniforms to a Negro League team that played in Milwaukee, but that’s another story.

My family doctor recently told me that new studies have shown that any amount of alcohol is not good for us. The old theory, he said, of a glass of wine at dinner or before bed helped this or that is no longer true. Whatever….I’d rather live to 70 with less stress thanks to a beer then live to 75 with no way to relax. And I know exercise helps. I try and walk a few miles every day and it does help, but there is nothing quite like a beer. And so as I exited the doctor’s office, my thoughts eventually returned to Owgust, to Beer Barrel man, to Barrel man and I knew that later that night I would be enjoying a frosty one and hopefully witness a Brewers win though they just got swept by the Phillies which has me wanting to drink 6 beers.