Milwaukee Post-Season Notes

The Bucks’ title is the 13th won after a game by a Milwaukee area team in a current major North American sports league. It was only the fourth such title clinched in a home game.

Green Bay (Packers), which for a long time played home games in Milwaukee, has won 10 NFL titles after a championship game. (They also won 3 via the league standings, on teams that included the great Don Hutson).

Three of those Packers’ wins were in home games, the first at Wisconsin State Fair Park (27-0) vs the New York Giants in 1939. In that tilt, certainly unusual is the fact both Tiny Engebrutsen and Ernie Smith not only scored “title game points” via a field goal but also did so with at least one extra point.

The next home title tilt win manifested with 10 more “Pack points” (37) in another shutout win vs the Giants, that at City Stadium in Green Bay in 1961. President John F. Kennedy granted Army? reserve, but a great Green Bay starter, Paul Hornung a weekend pass and he led the Packers to that title.

4 years later in the mud of renamed Lambeau Field vs the Cleveland Browns in the great Jim Brown’s last game with the Browns, Hornung and Jim Taylor led the Packers (23-12) vs Cleveland.

The Packers have won 4 Supe titles, at the neutral Supe site venue (leave it to Brady and the Bucs to win a home one, the 7th for Brady enabling him to pass ex Packers Forrest Gregg and Herb Adderley with a 7th NFL crown), those occurring under Vince Lombardi in ’66 and ’67 and also in ’96 and 2010.

Additionally “G.B.” won road title games at the Boston “Inappropriate nicknames” (Indians to Guardians is no big deal to me, either way, by the way) in ’36 and at the Giants in ’44 and ’62. They also lost at the Giants in the ’38 title game and in an NFC/NFL semi-final game in ’07 and a “div” game in ’11, in years the Giants won it all.

The Bucks’ previous title was clinched in a (118-106) road win to complete a sweep of the Baltimore Bullets, well over 50 years ago, on April 30, 1971. (this season, a second title season for the Bucks, they clinched a final spot scoring 118 points in #6 at Atlanta and lost the first two final round games to the Suns, with “Phoe” scoring 118 points in each).

Milwaukee’s other title was won at Yankee Stadium in #7 of the ’57 World Series, as Lew Burdette won his third game of that series (5-0) in #7. Only Sandy Koufax, who did so 8 years later, in addition to Lew, pitched shutouts in games 5 and 7 of a World Series.

Randy Johnson, otherwise a post-season bust, won 3 games (#7, in a not so hot inning (Moss said innings as I typed) relief stint) in the ’01 W.S. the only time a “Zona” team copped a pro title. The Suns are (0-3), the Cardinals (they have gone longer than any other NFL team sans a title, but at least unlike a # of NFL teams, have a title (’47 as Chicago) (0-1) in final round play.