Bonnie Brewer will prance along the foul lines in hot pants, kiss the third-base coach and whack him on his fanny with her broom during the seventh-inning stretch. Members of the ground crew will wear lederhosen as they rake the infield dirt. The old baseball-shaped bullpen car will escort relief pitchers to the mound.
Such nostalgia and more will be reinvented and packaged as the Milwaukee Brewers bid adieu to County Stadium in the final two weeks of the 1999 season.
The team is compiling a steady lineup of promotions to celebrate the storied history of the stadium.
"Times were different then; we're going to relive County Stadium as it was," said Dean Rennicke, director of corporate sales for the Brewers. "Heck, we all grew up in this place. We want to make memories."
The Brewers requested that the National League allow them to end their season at home this year, said Laurel Prieb, Brewers vice president of corporate affairs and husband of team President Wendy Selig-Prieb.
The National League cooperated by granting the team a 13-game homestand that will be full of promotions selling nostalgia before the club moves next year into Miller Park, which looms ever larger beyond County Stadium's center-field wall.
"There will be some tears shed, some laughs," Prieb said. "When that comes to an end, we will be flying 200 mph toward Miller Park. But we've just got to do this first."
Prieb says Rennicke is a main creative force behind the Brewers' County Stadium farewell celebration. Rennicke says much of the credit should go to people such as his assistants, Amy Welch and Matt Groniger, managers of corporate sales.
Regardless, the Brewer brass credits fans for driving the farewell festivities.
"A lot of creativity comes from people who talked to us, the fans who grew up in the ballpark," Prieb said. "We got a lot of great advice. We should listen to those people, and we have. They came up with some great ideas."
One such idea came from Bob Montminy, a Mauston, Wis., resident who is a longtime Brewer fan. Montminy created a simple baseball board game that uses dice to replicate the action. It will be given away as a promotion Sept. 24 during that final homestand.The Brewers also have high hopes for the Sept. 26 game, when they will give away miniature banks molded in the shape of team mascot Bernie Brewer's chalet.
Other attractions will include free posters featuring a montage of County Stadium's greatest moments, Sept. 20; camera night, in which fans can go onto the field and take photos, Sept. 21; "County Stadium heroes" autograph promotions, featuring former Brewers, Milwaukee Braves and Green Bay Packers, Sept. 24 and Oct. 1; and a giveaway of a special collector's set of baseball cards, featuring Jackie Robinson and the four Brewers whose numbers by then will be retired by the team — Hank Aaron, Rollie Fingers, Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. Molitor's No. 4 will be retired during a ceremony June 11.
The final homestand will cap a season of "Bringing Down the House," which is the team's primary marketing campaign.
The campaign is expected to help the Brewers draw 2 million fans this year, a feat they haven't accomplished since 1983, Prieb said. "We would not make it anywhere near [2 million] if it were not for the final year promotions," he said.
The promotions and the extra dollars they generate through increased ticket, parking and concession sales will pad the team's bottom line.
Prieb could not estimate how much revenue the County Stadium farewell campaign will generate for the team but expects it will be substantial.
"It is fair to say that effective promotions have the ability to bring a third more in attendance and revenue over what that same game would have had without it," he said.
The final game on Oct. 3 already is nearly sold out, and the Brewers hope that as their marketing campaign escalates, attendance will rise throughout the last homestand.
Stephen Jagler writes for The Business Journal in Milwaukee.
