Doug Schmidt

I have had a passion for baseball, bowling, history and rock n roll longer than I can remember and I have been writing about them almost as long. I saw my first professional baseball game at age 3 when the Milwaukee Brewers were playing at Borchert Field-- yes, long before the current Brewers were formed. The year was 1951. I don't remember much about the game, but I enjoyed myself because my mom documented it in my baby book: "Doug had two hotdogs, one ice cream, one candy bar and some peanuts and said, 'Now I'm thirsty for a beer.'" By the time I was 4, I had my own miniature Brewers uniform. Clearly, my dad hoped I would grow up to be a ballplayer, but things don't always go as planned. I started writing about sports for my high school newspaper and never stopped. After receiving a B.A. degree in communications from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1973, I became managing sports editor for 21 suburban weeklies in the Milwaukee area. I also became an avid bowler for 40 years and covered the Professional Bowlers Association Miller High Life Open in Milwaukee for close to 15 years. In 1992, I became editor and publisher of the Ten Pin Journal, a bowling periodical which continues to circulate in bowling centers throughout the state of Wisconsin. I became a bowling historian and spent five years interviewing the individuals and researching events that earned Milwaukee recognition as the bowling hub of the nation. The culmination of those efforts was a book called, “They Came to Bowl, How Milwaukee Became America’s Tenpin Capital,” which published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2007. I was inducted into the Milwaukee Bowling Hall of Fame in 2004. Prior to that I was active as a parttime baseball writer for United Press International and the Associated Press from 1976 through 1994. Those experiences culminated in my latest work called "Six Outs To Go, A Milwaukee Baseball Anthology." It is an entertaining, fast-paced, fact-based personal retrospective of Milwaukee baseball history from the original minor league Brewers (1902-1952) and Milwaukee Braves (1953-1965), through the lost franchise years (1965-1969) and the arrival of the current Milwaukee Brewers via the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1970. There is something here for all generations of Milwaukee baseball fans: Can you name the only Brewer to win two Olympic Gold Medals? Do you know which player has hit the most homeruns while playing in Milwaukee? Can you name the Milwaukee pitcher who threw 201 pitches over 16 innings and lost 1-0? The answers are in "Six Outs To Go."