County Stadium

Milwaukee, WI

St. Louis Cardinals vs. Milwaukee Brewers

August 12, 2000

The Road Trip

We spent the night in a Super 8 motel on the north side of Minneapolis, not a bad place, definitely better than the Chicago EconoLodge. The staff at the front desk continued to make us feel like we were on another planet, there's just something about Minnesota. If you don't know what we're talking about, just go rent the movie Fargo, the Coen brothers weren't exaggerating. Anyway, we figured we'd get an early start the next day for the long boring drive back down to Milwaukee for a 7:00 PM game on Saturday. We were hoping to get some time to take a tour of the Miller Beer factory (they do give free samples, right?) and maybe see some other Milwaukee sites. We didn't have a hotel set up yet as they were all booked when we checked on the internet, so we were looking forward to some time get that behind us a know we'd have somewhere to sleep that night. It was around noon when we got within radio distance of Milwaukee, we flipped through the stations to find some sort of AM sports station. We heard one that sounded like a live sports broadcast and a voice came over saying, "Well, it's Bob Uecker day here at County stadium..." Our first reaction was, "This must be a rebroadcast of an old game, like maybe ESPN Classic Radio (like that even exists)." Then someone in the broadcast said that it was a Saturday. So we're like, "Well maybe it was just another Saturday (1 in 7 chance)." We gradually became more panicked as the info coming over the air eventually convinced us that the game was starting at 12:30, TODAY! At this point Mike was driving about as fast as the car would go in an attempt to get into cell phone range. Once there, we made a phone call to a friend in Milwaukee who said, "Oh yeah, they changed the game from 7:00 to 12:30." Great! Now we're about 100 miles outside of Milwaukee and 1/2 hour until gametime. We kept cruising at "ludicrous speed" and got to the stadium in time for the top of the 3rd. At least we could listen to the game on the radio while we were driving there. Fortunately we hadn't yet missed a home run. County Stadium has a chalet built deep in center field. When a Brewer hits a homer, Bernie Brewer, the mascot, comes out of the top of the chalet and slides down a ramp into a huge mug of beer. We couldn't wait to see this and would have been pissed if we were still in the car. We parked and headed quickly to the stadium.

Getting Tickets

On our way to the stadium a desperate scalper came up to us and practically paid us to take his upper deck tickets out of his hands. We probably paid $20 for 3 tickets and made our way in. If we had gotten there on time we may have been in a position to score some better seats but as it turns out, the game was a pretty strong sell. The weather was great, it was on a Saturday, and by golly, it was Bob Uecker Day! We were sitting in the left field upper deck about mid-way up. It felt like it was about 140 degrees and we knew we'd end up looking like lobsters by the time we'd leave the ballpark.

The Park

County Stadium is old and plain, if it weren't for a tragic accident, we'd be in Miller Park for this game but in a sense, we were fortunate that County was still open because now we have an excuse to go back to Milwaukee to hit Miller Park. We had a great view of the construction of Miller Park beyond the outfield. County Stadium will never make the top of our lists or be a common memory but it does have a few unique features:

1) The glorification of beer and all things beer related - The team mascot is Bernie Brewer. When the home team hits a bomb he slides from the roof of his house (assumedly because he's too drunk to walk down the stairs) into a giant mug of beer (assumedly because he's too drunk to actually hold a mug and lift it to his mouth). How do parents explain to their children that the team mascot, a lovable beer brewer, likes to swim in beer to celebrate a home run? Maybe that's just part of growing up in Milwaukee! It was very refreshing in today's world of political correctness.

2) The sausage race - Many stadiums have some sort of fictitious race during the games, many of the time it's some sort of computer graphic on the screen. For example, at Yankee Stadium, at each game there is a Subway race which the fans watch and cheer for their neighborhood subway to win. They even show the season stats for the Subway Race. At County Stadium, they have humans dressed up as sausages, Bratwurst, Polish, and Italian (they even break it down by ethnicity) who start in the outfield and actually race to home plate while the fans are cheering. This was awesome! Again, some great anti-PC antics at County Stadium.

3) The food at the stadium was great. It was like Oktoberfest and baseball mixed together. This was one time where we couldn't gripe about the lack of Anheuser Busch products as we were in Milwaukee and try and keep a "when in Rome..." attitude about our travels.

Pros: Bernie Brewer, Sausage Race, ballpark food, Milwaukee, Miller Brewery, old school blue & yellow Brewers hats with the glove and ball

Cons: Bud Selig, plain stadium, Bob Uecker

The Game

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We were just hoping and hoping that one of the Brewers would hit a homer so we could see Bernie ride the beer bobsled but we know we might be jinxed when Burnitz wasn't starting the game, not a good sign. Richie Sexon was probably our next best bet but it just wasn't in the cards. We though that the streak from the previous 2 games might hold true where we would see a home run when Dauber went to buy his program but not today. Maybe we should have pooled some money together and sent him to get a program in the bottom of every inning. The fans were pretty good and there were a lot of kids at the park. They said something or other about Euker and we reminisced about our favorite Mr. Belvedere episodes

No, the ACTUAL game...

This game turned out to be a real sleeper, and the one game where we had an extra incentive (Bernie Brewer) to see a homerun. We didn't appreciate it at the time but this was probably one of the last great outings by Rick Ankiel who gave up 1 through 6 with a K:BB ratio greater than 1! All of us being American League fans, we watched in dismay as we saw 24 runners left on base in 12 innings. Terrible! This is great ammo for the "pro DH" people. This game was such a drag combined with the sun just beating down on us, we didn't even make it 'til the finish. We stayed through the 10th and then made our way back to the parking lot and heard the end from the car. We couldn't even value this game as a pitchers duel because there were plenty of baserunners. Granted there were plenty of K's but seeing flashes of brilliance followed by mistakes doesn't make a great game. Maybe the fact that we had second degree burns from the sun by the 7-th inning stretch had something to do with it, but we were eager to head downtown to the Miller Brewery!

Thrill Factor: 1.5 / 5