Lizzy Larson
'The Rise of Breese Stevens Field' author David Michael Miller.
David Michael Miller has made a lasting contribution to the city’s written history.
We all know Breese Stevens Field. The venue, known simply as Breese, occupies a large chunk of prominent Madison real estate, the 900 block of East Mifflin Street and East Washington Avenue. Its stone walls are pitted from nearly 100 years of Wisconsin weather. But what do you really know about Breese Stevens Field and the teams that played there? A new book, The Rise of Breese Stevens Field, is a deep dive, a microhistory of the ballpark and those sports figures who called it home. (Full disclosure: I gave the author feedback on an early draft of the manuscript.)
Author David Michael Miller has a personal connection to the park. His grandfather, Clifford G. Adkison, was a caretaker and groundskeeper there from 1938-1964. Miller is a former longtime Isthmus production artist and well-known area graphic artist — you might recognize his annual posters for such east-side festivals as the Willy Street Fair, Orton Park and more. He had been doing genealogical research and became curious about his grandfather’s relationship to the east-side venue. “Sometimes he’d be quoted in newspapers on field conditions,” Miller says, and that sparked a greater curiosity about the history of the ballpark itself.
Then, COVID-19 hit. Isthmus shut down and Miller found himself at home. “I had eons of time, no deadlines and nothing to do, really,” he says. He decided that digging into the stadium’s past would be his COVID project. “I’m going to research the hell out of this,” he told himself. And he has. The resulting history, 188 pages, depicts a Madison that’s long gone, a small town looking for community, where the field hosted contests between teams from Gardner Bakery and Borden Dairy, as well as the city’s high schools.
A good chunk of the book covers the history of Madison’s own minor league baseball team, the Madison Blues, which operated from 1923-1942. The team’s manager, Eddie Lenahan, becomes a larger-than-life figure in the history. Another major figure and nearly forgotten name is Wisconsin State Journal sports writer Roundy Coughlin, who drummed up enthusiasm and raised funds to get the baseball team off the ground.
The book also goes into the construction of the park, a saga in and of itself. Designed by Madison architects Claude and Starck and finished in 1926, Breese didn’t gain its stone wall until the Great Depression, when that became a project of the Civil Works Administration.
The cover of 'The Rise of Breese Stevens Field.'
During the early months of COVID, Miller did his research mostly through online Wisconsin newspaper archives via the Madison Public Library, but as restrictions eased he furthered his quest at the Wisconsin Historical Society, where he found lists of events that had been held at Breese, how much they’d earned, blueprints and more. “It was kind of a hunt,” Miller says. “The city didn’t have them. But the Historical Society archives did.”
Miller has penned several articles over the years for Isthmus, including a fascinating history of iconic Madison-area logos and a graphically-savvy survey of gerrymandered Wisconsin electoral maps. He has no formal training in historical research, but learned from the experts: “The only books I read are history books and I see how they’re researched and sourced.”
Miller, who grew up in Monona, started out taking art classes at the UW-Madison in the early 1980s, and fell into working with the Daily Cardinal. After his first meeting, he says, he knew the paper was “the perfect atmosphere” for him: “The first night I was there they asked me to draw five different things and miraculously they were all in the paper the next day, and I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do now.’”
Miller submitted his manuscript to the University of Wisconsin Press and the Wisconsin State Historical Society Press, but ultimately decided to self-publish the book through Amazon. He was in a good position to DIY, with experience in graphic design and requesting permission to reproduce historical documents and images. He’s been gratified by the response to the book so far and elated that he got it out in time for the 100th anniversary of Breese Stevens Field in 2026.
“One big challenge I’m going to have is to keep this from being the only thing I talk about any more.”
The book is available at the Mustard Museum and can be ordered through Amazon.com.
