Reds 2, Brewers 1
August 15, 2013
(Randy's Perspective)
Milwaukee. Now that was a party.
Miller Park, home of the Milwaukee Brewers, is where our 2013 stadium journey ended. It was a fitting conclusion. It was fun, with some unexpected twists.
Let me put it this way. Any place that plays the Beer Barrel Polka during the seventh-inning stretch has got to be a fun-loving place. Did I mention that everybody in the park – 30,000 strong on this night – sang along when the Polka got going?
We should have expected that Milwaukee would be a place where fans love their beer. Penny’s brother-in-law, Mart, is from Wisconsin. One night, while several family members were together, we were celebrating, enjoying a few shots and beers. Someone in the group mentioned that he or she was getting a little buzzed, and maybe it was time to slow down. Mart famously said, “This is nothing. I’m from Wisconsin. This is what we do. We drink.”
Not long after that Mart passed out. We thought that was a little curious, but hey, we’re not from Wisconsin. Maybe passing out is the traditional end of the process.
Anyway, Mart’s hometown has a great name. He’s from Butternut, Wisconsin. Graduated from Butternut High. Way up north. Population 375, according to the 2010 census. Look it up.
I mention that because in Miller Park we sat in front of two friendly ladies from Milwaukee. When they asked if we’d ever been to Milwaukee, we said no, we’d never been to Milwaukee and only been to Wisconsin vicariously through Mart’s stories.
We told them he was from Butternut. They thought we were making it up. They even discussed this piece of geographical information with their husbands, who also couldn’t swear they’d ever heard of Butternut.
“Well, it’s definitely small,” Penny told them. “In fact, Mart calls Milwaukee people city slickers.”
Regarding Milwaukee itself, we spent almost the whole day tooling around part of the city before we headed to Miller Park. I understand that you can’t really get a feel for a city in one day. But we got a truly favorable first impression. It would be difficult to describe a city with more than a half-million people as quaint, but it almost felt that way, especially after a few days in Chicago.
But when we got to Milwaukee, we just tooled around for awhile before finding ourselves at a county park on the Lake Michigan shore. We took a bike ride along the lake, visited a trendy little shopping/dining area (Third Ward) and had a terrific dinner to celebrate Penny’s birthday, which was that very day.
Of the 30 to 40 people we met, all of them, 100 percent, were friendly. That’s a heck of a first impression.
When we got to Miller Park, it was a tailgating scene. Beer and brats. Charcoal grills everywhere. Games of corn-hole going on. It was, for all practical purposes, the scene you get outside Sanford or Bryant-Denny stadiums in the SEC on a fall Saturday.
As we walked from the parking lot, though, the closer we got to the stadium the more Milwaukee-like things got. We were greeted by the “famous” five sausage mascots. There is the bratwurst, the Polish, the Italian, the hot dog and the chorizo. They race in the sixth inning. But here, outside, they were hanging out for pictures.
I told Penny, a devout vegetarian, that she should get her picture made with the bratwurst, who was nearby.
“I would,” she said. “But they’re kind of making me nervous the way they’re staring.”
Miller Park itself was worth the trip, in my humble opinion. The big retractable dome was open, because the temperature was in the mid-60’s. The ladies behind us said the closing of the dome is worth seeing.
Our seats were right behind home place, just below the press box. It was a different view. Carried me back to my days as a sportswriter, a time when I took great seats like this for granted.
As Penny mentioned, to our right were two guys that were in town for a convention. They were from Roswell, New Mexico, which of course prompted a discussion of geography and extraterrestrials.
It's a nice conversation piece," the guy next to me said. "I always have to that Roswell is not Area 51. That's in Utah. We're the place with the crash landing."
The New Mexico dudes left during the sixth inning and were gone until the bottom of the seventh. When they came back, one of them had what I think was a smoked turkey leg. It was hard to tell. The leg was bigger than a German shepherd.
We saw the Reds again. Two nights earlier we watched the Reds beat the Cubs. On this night, they beat the Brewers because of a monster home run by Joey Votto, Penny’s favorite player.
Actually, come to think of it, Penny’s favorite player is probably a tie between Joey Votto and Chris Davis of the Orioles.
And you can’t talk about the Brewers scene without mentioning the Sausage Race, which happens in the middle of the sixth. A fine race. The chorizo won.
We’ve now seen racing sausages (Milwaukee), presidents (Washington), utilities (Atlanta) and pierogies (Pittsburgh). The others copied the sausages, which were first.
Still, I’m partial to the peirogies.
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