When you look back at brewing history in America it seems beer and baseball have gone together like barley and hops. Several local breweries bought their own baseball teams or started one. One of our now defunct breweries was named Royal and it was alleged to have sponsored a baseball team named the Royals sixty years before our current team.
Our current trivia question deals with the Muehlebach brewing family who sponsored a local team named the Muehlebach Pilsners on which George E., son of the founder George Muehlebach, played first base. They played on a weedy field at 17th and Wyandotte.
In 1917, George E. continued his father’s involvement with local baseball, only on a much larger scale. … he purchased the local baseball franchise, the minor league Kansas City Blues, a member of the American Association. This team, which the brewery would own through 1932, would win the Association’s pennants in 1927 and 1929. For $500,000, George E. also purchased the old American Association baseball field at 22nd and Brooklyn, renaming it Muehlebach Field. A new ballpark was built at this site and opened in time for the 1923 season, during which, the Kansas City Blues set an American Association home attendance record of 450,000. The success of this team nourished another dream of George E., which was for Kansas City to obtain a major league franchise. Unfortunately this dream would not materialize until the arrival of the Kansas city A’s in 1955, the same year George E. passed away. Later, Muehlebach Field would become, as most of us remember it, Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium.
