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TheBarrelman is amascotlogo used by two baseball teams in Milwaukee nicknamed "Brewers".
When theBrewers began playing in theAmerican Association of Professional Baseball in 1901 the Barrelman was associated with the team. In the 1940s the mascot was embraced by the team. The character was nicknamed Owgust and was used as a mascot for the Brewers from 1942 until 1952. The character resembled abeer barrel and had atap in place of a nose. The Brewers general manager Rudie Schaffer for popularizing Owgust in the 1940s. Also in the 1940s the team began promoting the Barrel Kid.[1]
In the 1940s and 1950s, a whole series of Beer Barrel Men were used as logos by the club – pitching, batting, fielding balls and running the bases. The December 1944 issue ofBrewer News, the club's newsletter, depicted Owgust in aSanta Claus suit and long white beard.
The Beer Barrel Man was used until spring training of 1953, when theBoston Braves displaced the Brewers in Milwaukee.
After the Braves moved toAtlanta after the 1965 season, former Braves minority ownerBud Selig announced the formation of a group to bring major league baseball club back to Milwaukee, adopting the batting Beer Barrel Man as his organization's logo.
When Selig's group was awarded the bankrupt American League Seattle Pilots franchise, he moved them to Milwaukee and the Beer Barrel Man made a comeback as the first logo of the new Milwaukee Brewers. The Beer Barrel Man was used by the American League club through the 1977 season.
In 1977, the Milwaukee Brewers sponsored a contest to replace the Barrelman logo. The team received 1,932 entries, from which they selected a logo designed by a 30-year-old college art student named Tom Meindel. The logo that was selected is known as theball-in-glove logo.[2]
Since then, he has made appearances on stadium giveaways, such as the 1999 Turn Ahead the Clock promotion, and has found new life on Cooperstown Collection merchandise.
The Beer Barrel Man was also featured in the winning design for the Brewers' "Design A Youniform" contest in 2013. The contest received nearly 700 entries and the winning design, created by Ben Peters of Richfield, Minnesota, used the Beer Barrelman as the cap logo and sleeve patch. This design was used in exhibitions games on March 22 in Arizona against the Chicago Cubs and once again March 30 in a game at Miller Park in Milwaukee against the Chicago White Sox.
In 2013, fans selectedBernie's Barrelman Ale as the name of a new craft beer, made byLeinenkugel's, in a poll on the team's website.[3]
On January 25, 2015, at their "On Deck" offseason event, the Brewers announced they would be bringing back the character, now named simply "Barrelman", as a costumed mascot.[4]
Barrelman is sometimes confused withBernie Brewer. Bernie has always been a human figure, first a regular man inlederhosen and then a costumed human mascot suit.