Founded in 1908 by the locally prominent Polish-American realtor and politician Louis Fons, the Kosciuszko Reds were a semi-professional baseball team that became the sporting pride of the Polish South Side in the second decade of the century. Named after Tadeusz Kościuszko, a patriotic hero to Poles and Americans alike, and clad in red-and-white uniforms that recalled the Polish national colors, the “Koskys” were frequent champions of the Lake Shore League. They regularly attracted crowds numbering in the thousands to their Sunday afternoon games, and their rosters included numerous players who competed at higher levels during their careers, notably Milwaukee native Oscar “Happy” Felsch, one of the stars of the Chicago White Sox banned from organized baseball for conspiring with gamblers to “fix” the 1919 World Series. Among the best known photographs in the Kwasniewski Collection is a series of pictures taken of a game between the Reds and the Peters Union Giants, a Chicago based black team, on the occasion of the opening of the Koskys’ stadium, South Side Park, in May 1912.
Neal Pease
Professor, History
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee