An unprecedented crowd of 1,200 fans packed Guy Lowman Field on a Friday in early May of 1991, but it was for all the wrong reasons.
The University of Wisconsin varsity baseball team split its doubleheader with Purdue that afternoon, with a 1-0 loss in the night cap putting the finishing touches on a season that saw the Badgers win just 16 games while compiling 36 losses.
But it wasn’t just another subpar season ending when John Vanden Heuvel’s fly ball was caught for the final out at 5:32 p.m. on May 10. Instead, more than a century’s worth of history of UW varsity baseball came screeching to a halt.