Park #6

August 9, 2005: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Well, I got a few rabid emails from people wondering why it was taking so long for me to post my reviews. Sorry folks, I haven't had email or internet access for the last 6 days, but now I'm back in Cleveland for a solid 36 hours and I'm all updated.
Also, my photos are online, check them out at
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jefflazarus/album?.dir=5ff3&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jefflazarus/my_photos
i think it's crazy that I've taken 130 photos in 6 parks, but oh well.
Last night I went to Miller Park. Before I went to this park, a few people told me that it was not impressive and that the park sucked, well, those people are idiots. This park was really great. In case you didn't know, Miller Park is a retractable dome, and the whole park is freaking huge. I was so pumped about the dome that I was actually praying for rain just so they would use the dome. As you come off the freeway you see the park and it is just ginormous. What is really cool is that as you are walking around the exterior of the park, before you get inside, you can see into the park from jsut about everywhere. There is glass surrounding the park so that you can see into the stadium, which I really liked. It just had a very open feeling. Also, in front of the stadium, they have two statues, of Hank Aaron, and Robin Yount. These statues themselves are really great, but they are right next to each other, and they are the only two in the entire park. I really thought there would be more, but then I realized how much the Brewers sucked.
As you get into the park, the fun keeps on coming. There is so much going on in the park. Every two feet there is a different concession stand or something like that. It is just crazy crowded stuff in there. It was nice because you if you wanted a hot dog, you would pretty much trip over a hot dog stand instantly, but it kind of reminded me of the mall; just too much visual overload.
Okay, as I got to my seat, I was friggin shocked. I thought that a park that looked so huge from the outside would be just as big on the inside, but no, I was wrong. Just about every seat in the park is right on top of the field. There is very little buffer between the field itself and the seats. I got the $10 bleacher seats and ended up getting in the 2nd row in right center. This was crazy, I was literally four feet from the warning track, absolutely awesometastic!
The Brewers have this really neat slide up in left center field, and upon further inspection I found out that the Brewers mascot (this big yellow fuzzball) has a little shed way up in left field, and he pumps up the crowd from there and when the Brewers hit a homer, he goes down this big yellow slide. What kind of a snooty mascot is this? The dude never came out of his little slide area, and just chilled from his Ivory slide tower. The point of a mascot is to hang out with the commoners and hug little kids and bother people when they are eating their nachos. Who is this guy, who does he think he is? First of all, it sucks because I wanted to slide on the slide, I just know he was hoarding that thing for himself. Secondly, how can a guy dressed in all yellow fur and a Brewers uniform possibly think he's better than me? That's just crap.
The food sucked. Right near my seat was the "Gorman Thomas grill". Now, Gorman Thomas is a former Brewers player, who was a guy that by his girth, you could tell that he loved him some food. Well, the man doesn't know hot dogs, he must've gotten fat on nachos or something, cause his hot dog was nothing special. It was a below average dog, but it wasn't flesh colored, so I won't complain too much. However, park does have Leinenkugel Honey Weiss on tap there. A wonderful beer, and you should try it.
Now, its story time. Being in the bleachers (which was a great location), the downside was the fans around me. First of all, the Brewers were playing the Cardinals, which meant that there were as many Cards fans as Brewers fans, and the name calling and shouting was in full force. There was a group of four dudes behind me who i guess who just about 21 or 22 years old. These guys helped prove to me that yes, every city I go to has assholes. These four guys must have had 8 beers each in the first 5 innings. Now, you know these guys are idiots, because it cost these guys $50 each just to get drunk, I mean, how dumb are you. You get drunk in the parking before the game, not at the game, it costs four times as much. These guys were bad drunks too. It was their sole purpose during the game to pump up the crowd with idiotic chants. These guys were idiots, they had wonderfully creative chants like "Pujols blows", "We fucked Edmonds' mom", "Hey, Taguchi, you are an inferior baseball player". Wow, I mean, these guys were geniuses. These guys were so annoying for the first five innings. And then in the sixth the beer started to kick in, and over the course of one inning, these guys went from hooting and hollering every 3 seconds to out of commission. One of them passed out, one of them got the drunk sways (you know, where you are so drunk you just sway back and forth), one ended up leaving and going to the parking lot after he told his buddies "I gotta go barf on stuff", and the fourth spent the last three innings calling everyone he knew on his cell phone to tell them he was drunk. Yeah, these guys were class acts.
The game itself wasn't too exciting, the Cardinals didn't give the Brewers much to hit, and won 5-2. The Brewers starting pitcher Doug Davis (known by the fans as Double Ds), pitched 6 strong innings and only gave up 2 runs, but hte bullpen let it slide. The Brewers hitting was atrocious though, I think they had two hits in the first 7 innings, and after that couldn't get more than one baserunner at a time.
Overall, I thought the park was pretty impressive architectually, but I think that it could use a little improvement on the inside of the park., I'm gonna give the park a B+ overall.
6 down, 14 to go, next stop San Diego and the West Coast.
Laz