Milwaukee, WI

How this lifelong Brewers fan and famous wood artist played a special role in the 50th anniversary of Robin Yount’s MLB debut

Published

2 years ago

August 24, 2024

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How this lifelong Brewers fan and famous wood artist played a special role in the 50th anniversary of Robin Yount’s MLB debut

Milwaukee Brewers legend Robin Yount said he was “the luckiest guy in the world” to have been drafted by the team.

When wood artist Isaac Wynter Weins — a lifelong fan of the Crew — was commissioned by the ball club to make a custom piece to honor Yount, he felt pretty darn lucky, too.

“It’s one thing to partner with big companies and do cool collabs, but it’s a whole different ballgame when it’s things that are from your hometown, things you grew up with,” said Weins, known as Ike Wynter to his massive social media following. “It’s definitely a dream come true.”

Spring marked the 50th anniversary of Yount’s debut as a Brewer at 18 years old. The Kid, who’d become the face of the franchise, would spend his entire 20-year career with Milwaukee, during which he batted .285 while amassing 3,142 hits, 251 home runs and 1,406 runs batted in.

Ahead of Sunday’s game at American Family Field, the ball club recognized Yount and his milestone anniversary. That included a 35-second standing ovation as the Baseball Hall of Famer took the field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

But before that, in a more intimate setting by the clubhouse, Weins — who’s had quite the career himself — got to unveil to Yount and his family the custom wood mosaic he spent 75 hours creating in his Butler studio.

It’s a home plate with two bats that appear to be crisscrossing through it. A nameplate atop says “Yount #19” with a baseball above and a “50th anniversary” with the Brewers glove logo below.

Besides a couple of bats given to him by the team, the artist used nothing but reclaimed wood — which is Weins’ medium — and his go-to tools: A scroll saw, band saw and sander. He cuts all the pieces to fit together almost like a puzzle. And, he never uses stains or paints.

To bring the piece for Yount to life, Weins used wood from a school desk he found on the side of the road, a sheet of wood paneling and birch plywood from dumpsters, a bulletin board from a Milwaukee elementary school and a kitchen cabinet door from his time in Minnesota.

He knocked out the glove first, then worked his way around the piece, section-by-section, he said. The baseball was one of the last parts he tackled, having to make “the tiniest incisions and cuts” to create its intricate stitching.

Local artist Ike Wynter unveils the custom wood mosaic he made for Robin Yount

“Are you the artist?” Yount pointed to Weins in a video he shared on social media.

“I’m Robin Yount,” the man of the hour said, walking over to shake the artist’s hand.

Awaiting the grand reveal, Yount joked, “I hope you made me look good,” probably expecting a portrait of sorts, Weins recalled. The two-time MVP was in for quite the surprise.

After Weins pulled off a black sheet to reveal the large wood mosaic, Yount’s response was: “Oh wow, very cool.”

Weins walked Yount through the piece and the elaborate journey that went into making it. Weins said Yount “really got” and appreciated it.

Weins said he had heard from folks who watched Yount’s career unfold in real-time that he was “the greatest” both on and off the field.

“Meeting him was a testament to that,” Weins said. “The whole time we were talking and chatting, it wasn’t meeting like an A-list celebrity or anything. He was just a very down-to-earth, Milwaukee dude. And, a community-driven dude. And, you can just tell that.”

Weins also made a plaque to attach to the back of the mosaic that’s embedded with the pencil he used to sketch and mark up the piece. “That’s awesome, Ike,” Yount told him.

To memorialize the moment, Yount, his crew and Weins posed for pics with the mosaic, which will be shipped to the baseball icon’s Arizona home.

And, this wasn’t Weins’ only photo op of the day. He also got to go onto the field — which he had never done before — and to a sentimental spot outside of the stadium.

In 2003, 10-year-old Weins got to play at Helfaer Field, the youth baseball diamond adjacent to where the Brewers play.

Ahead of Sunday, Weins dug up an old photo from that exciting day of him and his teammates outside of what was then Miller Park.

While at the ballpark for the unveiling, Weins stopped by that same spot. It was a “full-circle moment” for him.

“Whatever you want to do or believe in, it’s doable. It’s not out of reach,” Weins said. “If you set out to do something, you can make it happen. You just got to figure it out.”

If Weins’ name sounds familiar, that’s probably because it is. He was the artist behind that giant wooden Crayola crayon box that was making its rounds on social media earlier this summer.

The Mequon resident’s muses are nostalgia and mental health awareness.

The piece that helped launch Weins’ social media career a couple years back was the one he made for former boxing champ Mike Tyson. Since then, he’s constructed Tommy Pickles from “Rugrats,” a “Hoan Town Lager” for 414 Day, a Polaroid camera with interchangeable photos, Legos, a depiction from “Giannis: The Marvelous Journey,” a Father’s Day surprise for “Power Ranger” and singer Chance Perez, and more.

“I feel like a lot of us, your childhood is your greatest years,” Weins said in a previous Journal Sentinel interview. “You just have so many beautiful, warm thoughts. If I can create art that makes people remember things and experiences in their child for that glimpse of a moment as adults now, I just think it’s a cool opportunity.”

His own mental health journey is what led him to start creating art that brings awareness. One of those pieces is “YOU HAVE PURPOSE,” a phrase Weins spelled out with wooden Scrabble letters that span six feet. The number values on the letters made up the Suicide Hotline, which has been simplified to 988.

Weins’ first gallery showing was at Unfinished Legacy in 2023. Since then, he’s displayed pieces at the Milwaukee Night Market, the Milwaukee Athletic Club and a private art gallery at the New York Stock Exchange.

But, before Weins became a full-time artist, he lived many other lives.

He was in the hardcore metal band Narrow Hearts, which played shows at The Rave and all across the country.

He started a junk removal business with his older brother, Andrew, who was formerly in the U.S. Army and remains in the Reserves.

It was during that time that Weins found art as a way to breathe new life into the discarded wood the business collected. And in 2021, Wynter moved to Minneapolis in pursuit of his passion.

Soon after, however, he’d split his time between his own dream and helping make the dreams of others come true. He landed a “dream job,” working as a tour manager for the Los Angeles-based Dream Machine Foundation.

In April 2023, Weins moved back to the Milwaukee area and took his art full-time.

You can read more about Weins and his journey here.

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Milwaukee, WI

Milwaukee oversight body asks for more police pursuit policy changes

Published

1 hour ago

March 6, 2026

Press Room

Milwaukee oversight body asks for more police pursuit policy changes

The Fire and Police Commission is mulling a recommendation the Milwaukee Police Department amend its police chase policy and restrict chases for reckless driving.
The current recommendation draft calls for a ban on chases for reckless driving after an attempted traffic stop. That will now move to a committee for further changes.
The draft recommendation comes after department modified the policy to remove speeding as a sole justification for chases. Prior, speeding was allowed to be considered when evaluating reckless driving

A Milwaukee oversight body is pushing for further restrictions on how the city’s police decide to chase vehicles, but isn’t ready to move those forward yet.

At its March 5 meeting, the city’s Fire and Police Commission mulled a recommendation the Milwaukee Police Department no longer chase drivers for reckless driving after an attempted traffic stop and stop other chases for reckless driving if it raises danger to the public. The department’s pursuit policy has been a point of contention for years and has come under intense scrutiny after nine people died from police chase crashes in 2025.

But that recommendation was tabled and sent to commission committee for further discussion, after concerns it needed to be further tweaked and receive more police department input.

“I’m trying to find incremental changes we can make to reduce chases,” said Commissioner Bree Spencer, who sponsored the recommendation.

Spencer said she was hesitant to push for policy changes that were too sweeping or too permissive. She said that had happened in years past, when pursuits were heavily restricted in 2010 and then later opened up in 2017 in response to reckless driving, following a then-Fire and Police Commission order.

As has become the norm at the commission’s meetings, a lengthy public comment period was held where some were critical of the proposed changes. Some called for dashcam footage of pursuit-related deaths to be released, as policy requires in officer shootings, and for the city’s costs of police chase-related lawsuits to be publicized.

“Police chases do not keep our community safe,” Angela Lang, the co-executive director of Black Leaders Organizing Change, said during public comment.

The Fire and Police Commission’s proposed recommendation comes after the department voluntarily removed speeding as a permissible reason to chase someone who is recklessly driving. However, that move was met coldly by members of the public and the commission, which is the oversight body for the department, who said it didn’t go far enough.

Generally, department policy considers pursuits “justified” under six circumstances, among those being when an occupant is involved in a violent felony.

Milwaukee Assistant Chief Craig Sarnow said the department was content with its previous change, when commissioners asked him for feedback on the proposed recommendation.

Both the Fire and Police Commission’s drafted recommendation and police department’s change focus on reckless driving chases. Those make up an overwhelming amount of all chases that officers in Milwaukee make – with officers citing reckless driving as the initiating reason in 742 of the 970 chases in 2025, according to police data.

The Fire and Police Commission’s recommendation is also the first time the body has exercised that power since state legislation, 2023 Wisconsin Act 12, was passed. Before that legislation was passed, the commission held the ability to outright change police department policy, but the law shifted that to the city’s Common Council.

Some have called for the Fire and Police Commission to more aggressively issue recommendations like these.

The recommendation will now move to the commission’s Oversight and Accountability Committee. The decision was made after commissioners said they sought more time to tweak the language and for police to provide input.

License plate reading camera use scrutinized

The department’s use of license plate reading cameras, a system known as Flock, came under scrutiny from many attendees at the meeting as well, who called for the city to ban it. Many noted the recent criminal charges brought against Josue Ayala, an officer who prosecutors say improperly used the system to track a former partner and another person.

Ayala resigned and is facing a misdemeanor charge of attempted misconduct in public office. Ayala had previously faced claims of lying and excessive force but was not placed on a Milwaukee County District Attorney’s list of officers with a history of dishonesty, bias or integrity concerns until recently.

That was despite, in 2022, a federal public defender issuing a complaint against Ayala, saying he exaggerated so much in his testimony and reports that it almost seemed “like a compulsion.”

Milwaukee police officials like Heather Hough, the department’s chief of staff, said they were never made aware of that previous concern against Ayala.

“Had we received the information from defense counsel about these concerns they would have been investigated,” she said in an email to the Journal Sentinel.

But that goes against the role of the defense bar, outside experts and defense attorneys locally told the Journal Sentinel. Prosecutors have the ethical duty to share potential Brady material and serve the public, whereas defense attorneys’ obligation is to their client.

Milwaukee police began using Flock cameras in 2022. MPD has a $182,900 contract with Flock for the use of the technology. That contract is active through January 2027 and passed without requiring approval from member of the city’s Common Council, a point criticized by attendees.

The scrutiny against Flock came despite it not being on the meeting’s agenda. Attendees held signs that said things like “GET THE FLOCK OUTTA HERE” and called for the city to be “de-Flocked.”

David Clarey is a public safety reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He can be reached at dclarey@gannett.com.

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Milwaukee, WI

Illegal dumping plagues closed Milwaukee Pick ‘n Save

Published

13 hours ago

March 5, 2026

Press Room

Illegal dumping plagues closed Milwaukee Pick ‘n Save

Illegal dumping plagues closed Pick ‘n Save

Neighbors say since a Milwaukee Pick ‘n Save at 35th and North closed in 2025, the parking lot has been filling up, but not with cars or people. It has been attracting illegal dumpers.

MILWAUKEE – Neighbors say since the Milwaukee Pick ‘n Save at 35th and North closed in 2025, the parking lot has been filling up, but not with cars or people. It has been attracting illegal dumpers.

Trash piling up

What we know:

There are old mattresses and furniture in the parking lot. There are piles of garbage at the entrance of the old grocery store. Behind the building, there are tires, more mattresses and more trash.

Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee

The Pick ‘n Save stores closed in July 2025. Since then, the building has sat empty.

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FOX6 News was contacted by a man who manages senior and family housing in the area. He said in the last couple of months, he has noticed the stile turn into a place for illegal dumping. The man said he was so fed up, he called the office of Milwaukee Alderman Russell Stamper about the problem. The man said the whole site is an eyesore, and something needs to change.

Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee

Change sought

What they’re saying:

“As the snow melts, it’s full of garbage. People are dumping furniture on it, tires,” said Jeffrey Sessions, who manages nearby property. “If you drive around it, it’s garbage everywhere. It’s unsightly for the neighborhood, and it’s probably going to create rats and mice problems.”

FOX6 News reached out to the Department of Neighborhood Services. Officials said the dumping has not been reported. They said the department’s commercial team will now be made aware of the issue.

Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee

“It makes the whole neighborhood look like garbage, like nobody’s taking care of anything around here,” Sessions said. “It’s a detriment, it’s unsightly, and it needs to be addressed.”

Illegal dumpers could face fines

Dig deeper:

If the dumpers are caught on camera, they could face fines.

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The owner of the property may also be ordered to clean it up.

Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee

The Source: Information in this post was provided by a person who owns property near the former grocery store, as well as Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services.

Crime and Public SafetyMilwaukeeNews

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Milwaukee, WI

Things to do in the Milwaukee area this weekend, including Sports Show

Published

1 day ago

March 5, 2026

Press Room

Things to do in the Milwaukee area this weekend, including Sports Show

Travel to Ireland, learn how to catch a fish, visit wildlife at the zoo, and see costumed characters this weekend in Milwaukee.

Anime Milwaukee

The 2026 “Magical Academy” themed animation convention comes to the Baird Center, 400 W. Wisconsin Ave., and Hilton Milwaukee City Center March 6-8. The weekend features Japanese industry guests and cultural experts, artists and official merchandise, gaming, music, dance, manga, cosplay, anime and Asian fashion. New this year is the Nocturna Anime Bar with a lounge and specialty drinks, including nonalcoholic beverages. Exhibit hall hours are 1 to 8 p.m. March 6, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 7 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 8. Full weekend access is $100; single day access is $50-$75. animemilwaukee.org

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sports Show

The 85th year of the Sports Show is at State Fair Park’s Wisconsin Exposition Center, 8200 W. Greenfield Ave., West Allis, from noon to 7 p.m. March 6, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 7 and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 8. Along with outdoor exhibitors, see what’s swimming in the trout pond, watch the lumberjack show and the fastest retriever race, or catch the archery and air rifle tournaments. General admission tickets at the door are $15; youth tickets (ages 6-14) are $6. In honor of Women’s Day on March 8, all women receive $10 admission at the door. Check out the full schedule at jssportsshow.com.

Gardens & Gears: Steampunk Faire

Celebrate the industrial age at the Gardens & Gears art fair from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 7 at the Mitchell Park Domes, 524 S. Layton Blvd. The immersive garden event features creators, costumes and live entertainment, with gears, goggles and handcrafted mechanical curiosities on display in the gardens. Domes admission required. mitchellparkdomes.com

Milwaukee County Zoo Family Free Day

Everyone receives free admission at the Milwaukee County Zoo, 10001 W. Blue Mound Road, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 7. See the red pandas in their outdoor habitat, lions, penguins and more. Parking and regular attraction fees still apply. milwaukeezoo.org

Irish Family Day

Travel to the Irish countryside during “Passport to Ireland” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 8 at the CelticMKE Center, 1532 N. Wauwatosa Ave., Wauwatosa. With Irish dance, arts, crafts and storytelling, each county will be featured with an activity that celebrates Irish culture, history and traditions. Buy one, get one free Irish Fest tickets will be available to purchase, with lunch, beverages and snacks served in the Celtic Café. Admission is $10 at the door. celticmke.com

What’s new in Milwaukee-area theaters this weekend

Marcus Theatres: See a marathon of the 2026 Best Picture nominees at select theater locations. Day one of the marathon is March 7 and features “Sentimental Value,” “F1: The Movie,” “The Secret Agent,” “Bugonia,” and “Sinners.” The marathon resumes March 14 with a new set of films. Visit marcustheatres.com.

Milwaukee Film: Women’s History Month programming features the action films of Michelle Yeoh. See her Oscar-winning performance in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” screening at 6 p.m. March 6 at the Oriental Theatre.

“Hoppers”: A robotic animal with a human mind helps real animals thwart a plot to destroy their habitat in this Disney and Pixar feature film. See it at AMC Mayfair Mall; Avalon Theater; Marcus Theatres’ BistroPlex Southridge, Hillside, Majestic, Menomonee Falls, Movie Tavern Brookfield Square, North Shore, Ridge, South Shore cinemas; Rosebud Cinema.

“The Bride!”: A lonely Frankenstein (Christian Bale) travels to 1930s Chicago to ask a scientist (Annette Bening) to create a companion. See it at AMC Mayfair Mall; Marcus Theatres’ BistroPlex Southridge, Hillside, Majestic, Menomonee Falls, Movie Tavern Brookfield Square, North Shore, Ridge, South Shore cinemas.

“Protector”: A veteran war hero (Milla Jovovich) must use the violent skills she thought she left behind to save her daughter. See it at Marcus Theatres’ BistroPlex Southridge, Hillside, Majestic, Menomonee Falls, Movie Tavern Brookfield Square, North Shore, Ridge, South Shore cinemas.

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