Softball Classic events have been held every Memorial Day, 4th-of-July and Labor Day for the past ten years at Pumping Station Park in Riverwest. Each event features a series of three games over an afternoon, complete with a PA announcer, DJ, and, of course, brats and beer. The Classics are sponsored by Promises bar in Walker’s Point.
As a newcomer to Milwaukee, and someone uniquely interested in the intersection of baseball and art (see Baseball Cycling), I decided this Memorial Day 2024 to participate by tracking the games’ occurrences using the traditional baseball scorekeeping format and code language. Later, I referred to my scorecards to write a sports-article-style summary of the three-game series. Then, inspired by a friend’s photos of friends in the bleachers, I designed a zine pairing their photos with my written summary.
Thusly, a new project series was born.
See below for the complete 2024 summer season of series summaries. Pick up your Labor Day Classic Series Summary zine at the 2025 Memorial Day Classic.
