Is it Time to Bring Back the Marquette Law School Baseball Team?

Vintage BaseballEvery now and then the debate over whether or not Marquette should re-establish its varsity football team gets revived. Once a respected participant in the highest level of college football, Marquette unceremoniously dropped football in 1960. (See also here.)

In spite of its long tradition in sports law, it is a not well known fact that our law school once had its own baseball team. In his The Rise of Milwaukee Baseball: The Cream City from Midwestern Outpost to the Major Leagues, 1859-1901 (p. 324), Milwaukee historian Dennis Pajot notes that in 1895, a team called The Milwaukee Law Class competed with the city’s other amateur teams.

The Milwaukee Law Class, organized by the city’s law students in 1892, was Milwaukee’s first law school. In the mid-1890’s, its name was changed to the Milwaukee Law School, and in 1908, it was acquired by Marquette University. This is why the law school celebrated its centennial in 1992. (A second centennial celebration in 2008 marked the 100th anniversary of Marquette’s acquisition of the Milwaukee Law Class/School.)

Unfortunately, we do not know very much about the 1895 team, except that the scores of some of its games were listed in Milwaukee newspapers that year. It is, of course, possible that the team began play before 1895, but with a lower profile. If it did originate before 1895, it seems likely that one of the founders and original players on the Law Class team would have been Walter Schinz.

Schinz (born 1874) was one of the founders of the Law Class in 1892 and later a prominent 20th century Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge. He was also was an avid baseball player during his youth and an enthusiastic fan of the national pastime until his death in 1957. Schinz’ Milwaukee Sentinel obituary devoted much of its content to the judge’s life-long love of baseball that began as a sandlot player in Milwaukee in the 1880’s.

There is no reason to believe that the Milwaukee Law Class baseball team was an exceptionally powerful club. At that point, the school probably had somewhere between 20 and 40 students, some of whom were probably fairly athletic but many of whom were probably not. The fact that there is no record of the team after 1895, suggests that its success was probably limited.

In contrast, the Milwaukee Medical College baseball team, which played from at least 1894 into the early 20th century, appears to have been a more powerful club. (The Milwaukee Medical College was an independent medical school which opened in 1894 and was taken over by Marquette University in 1907.)

In 1901, the Medical College team was a solid enough amateur club to have played the American League’s Milwaukee Brewers in an exhibition game just before the opening of the 1901 major league season. (The Brewers apparently won the game in a convincing fashion.)

The 1901 season was the first year that the American League played as a major league, and the Brewers were one of its original eight teams. Unfortunately, a disappointing last place finish (48-89) and a league low attendance record led to the team being transferred to St. Louis in 1902, where the Brewers became the ill-fated St. Louis Browns (who are now the Baltimore Orioles).

After the 1908 acquisition of the Milwaukee Law School by Marquette University law students were eligible to play on the Marquette varsity team, and a number, including future sports lawyer and Congressman Ray Cannon, apparently did.

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The Rest of the Story

The story will be the horse race. It always is. Governor Walker and likely Democratic challenger Mary Burke are in a dead heat.  But there are a couple of interesting subplots in the latest numbers from the Marquette Law School Poll.

Like many Democratic candidates, Burke fares especially well with younger voters, and with those who are single (never married, widowed, or divorced).  Governor Walker, the Republican, scores best with those who are middle-age and married.  This is essentially the same voter behavior we saw in the 2012 presidential election.  But in a non-presidential year, the question for Burke will be whether those in the demographics who like her most will show up at the polls.

While the Burke campaign is undoubtedly pleased that the race appears close, one of the poll’s results may be cause for concern for her — 49 per cent of voters say they still don’t know enough about Burke to have an opinion of her.  That spells opportunity for the Walker campaign, which has unleashed a series of ads recently, rushing to define Burke before she defines herself.

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So What Do You Think of Mary Burke?

On one level, the results released Wednesday of a fresh round of the Marquette Law School Poll did not contain much new. As Charles Franklin, professor of law and public and policy and director of the poll,  said frequently during the “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” event at which results were presented, there was not much that was statistically different from the poll two months ago. The big headline – and it did, indeed, make big headlines – was that Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Mary Burke are essentially tied. That was the central result of the May poll as well.

I would suggest two important points that the little-changed results suggest:

One: The May results caught many people by surprise. There seemed to be a perception that, while the race was close, Walker was leading. The Law School Poll is the most closely watched and respected measure of public opinion in Wisconsin, and for the results to show a tie changed the perception of the race. But, as Franklin said on Wednesday, there were suggestions that the results might be a one-time matter, an “outlier.” To have almost identical results two months later should put to rest that notion. The only reasonable conclusion is that this really is a race that is tied at this point. The intense level of campaigning, more than three months before the November election, shows that the candidates themselves are operating on the understanding that this is an intense, highly competitive election that either could win.

Continue ReadingSo What Do You Think of Mary Burke?