Adam Rogan

3 weeks ago | milwaukeemag.com | Adam Rogan

Jim Van Lanen “was this crazy guy hacking through the brush” when Matthew Strathmann first met him a decade ago. As one does when they see a middle-aged man alone with shears emerging from the greenery of a public park, Strathmann paused his round of disc golf and struck up a conversation. If it wasn’t for that chance meeting and subsequent friendship, Wisconsin wouldn’t be hosting an international sports championship with a six-figure purse later this month.

1 month ago | milwaukeemag.com | Adam Rogan

Born as Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, the man who on Thursday in Vatican City became known as Pope Leo XIV, was a world traveler long before he was elected to lead the Catholic Church. He went to high school at a seminary in Michigan, studied mathematics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, returned to Chicago to further his studies and later to teach high school, spent many years as a missionary in Peru, and was even an educator right here in Wisconsin. But just how Midwestern is he?

2 months ago | milwaukeemag.com | Adam Rogan

An unprecedented era is now here. High school student-athletes, like NCAA competitors and professional athletes, can now make money off of their “Name, Image and Likeness” in Wisconsin. By an overwhelming 293-108 vote, the WIAA (the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association) approved this tectonic upheaval Friday, April 25This new reality was unthinkable even a decade ago.

2 months ago | milwaukeemag.com | Adam Rogan

Jeff Levering calls it “poetic” that his playing career peaked in the same state that his MLB broadcasting career began. Despite winning the 2003 D-III World Series in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, as a designated hitter with California’s Chapman University, Levering knew he didn’t have a future as a player. But much like a player, the Sacramento native worked his way through the minors as a broadcaster for a decade before making it to Milwaukee’s major league radio team in 2015.

Mar 27, 2025 | milwaukeemag.com | Adam Rogan

Jeff Levering pretty much knew his broadcast partner of 10 years would never call another game after his Milwaukee Brewers blew a late lead in a deciding Oct. 3 wild card game to the New York Mets. Levering was one of the very few even within the Brewers organization who knew about Bob Uecker’s two-year battle with small cell lung cancer, and it wasn’t looking good. “That one had some sting on it,” were Ueck’s last words as a broadcaster.