Baubles and Baseball

The jewelry artists’ booths are the ones I never fail to peruse at art fairs. So the baubles that caught my eye at Art on the Mill – the art fair sponsored by the Richfield Historical Society last Saturday – were the earrings. It was a perfect summer day – not too hot and a nice breeze was blowing. But this art fair was more. There were tours of historic buildings, music, and plein air (in the open air) painting. As one of the artists told me, “This is a destination art fair.”

The Messer/Mayer Mill is on the State and National Registers
of Historic Places and is a designated Washington County
landmark. The original equipment in the mill is still intact.

The plein air painters worked for about three hours and then displayed their final works – mostly oils and watercolors – in frames. Many different scenes of and around the mill were painted.

Liz Carr from Milwaukee used oils to paint one
of the buildings in the Richfield Historical Park.

 Later in the day we attended the Milwaukee Brewer game at Miller Park. We were guests of Rick’s boss, Dean Meier, who owns Applied Tooling Technologies. Our seats were on the field – in the ATI Club – with a player’s view of the action. I have to admit that I’m not very knowledgeable about baseball. So it’s a mystery to me that if we were on the right field, why was the left fielder on the team in front of us? 

Some of the old has been preserved in the new.

 It was tribute night to the Negro Leagues. Major League Baseball teams, like the Brewers, began to honor Negro League players for their contributions to our nation’s pastime 15 years ago on the 50^th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color barrier. One of the players honored was Mamie (Peanut) Johnson who played in the 1950s. She was the only woman to ever pitch in a men’s professional league. Her specialty was the curveball perfected with help from Satchel Paige.

 

As part of the tribute to the Negro Leagues, the Brewers wore replica uniforms first worn by the Milwaukee Bears, the city’s representative in the 1923 Negro National League. This team played only one season before disbanding. The opposing team, the Washington Nationals, wore uniforms of the Homestead Grays who eventually moved to Washington and were known as the Washington Grays. 

These stands were across the ball park from where we sat.

I managed to get one shot of Ryan Braun - running in at the end of the inning.

A Wisconsin player in a Bears uniform - not exactly what one would expect.
Norichika Aoki, who plays left fielder for the Brewers, was the player
closest to where we were sitting.

The Brewers lost 4-1 but Rick managed to snag two practice balls for his grandsons – to be held until they’re old enough to play baseball.