Sunday, September 14, 2014

Milwaukee Brewers Game at Miller Park

(Milwaukee, WI) Hi 64 Lo 46 – Last night I took advantage of being about three miles from Miller Park and went there to watch the Milwaukee Brewers play the Cincinnati Reds.

How I got my ticket is an interesting story. The Brewers haven’t been selling out many games, so I thought I’d just buy a ticket at the ballpark when I got there. Yesterday morning I checked their ticket availability only just for fun and found out there were less than 100 tickets left. What??!! I checked further and found out that it’s “Hank the Dog Bobblehead Night.” This past spring a stray dog wandered into the Brewers’ spring training facility. He was in pretty bad medical shape from being hit by a car. The team tried to find the owners, but they had no success so they adopted the dog, had it treated at a vet, and it became a new mascot for the team. They named him Hank, for the great home run hitter Hank Aaron (who played for the Milwaukee Braves years ago). Well, social media took over as it does often in these times, and Hank the Dog became quite the celebrity here in Milwaukee. So they came up with a bobblehead to give away at last night’s game, and the result was a sellout.

Here’s Hank standing next to his bobblehead. (Web photo) He really is adorable.

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But back to my ticket… Once I saw how few tickets were left I decided to make a quick trip to the stadium to buy a ticket at the ticket office. (I could have bought one online, but they tend to add a lot of handling charges and other crazy fees). It was a quick trip, but I had my ticket (high up behind home plate, just where I like to sit).

Here’s Miller Park yesterday morning, with empty parking lots. (Click on photos to enlarge them.)

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The stadium has a unique fan-shaped retractable roof. In the photo above it’s open, and it can be closed in about 10 minutes, which it was prior to game time.

Game time was 6:10pm, so I left around 4:45 to I’d get there about an hour early. Traffic entering the stadium area was really heavy, and once I reached my parking space in the “General Parking” lot I found myself quite far from the stadium.

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I turned on my Runkeeper app on my smart phone to measure the distance from my car to my seat, and it was 9 tenths of a mile. Ten bucks to park almost a mile away! One thing that was a surprise was the tailgating that goes on at Brewers games. You usually associate tailgating with football, and it was unusual to see it at a baseball game.

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They arrive hours before game time, so that’s why I had to park so far away.
Remember that retractable roof? Here’s how it looks from the inside when it’s closed.

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I fooled around with the Photo Sphere setting on my phone camera, which resulted in this cool fish-eye effect.

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And I love taking panoramas.

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It was a very enjoyable evening. The Reds beat the Brewers 5-1, which helps my Cardinals in the standings.

Today was all about sports on TV. Football, baseball, and racing. My Dolphins lost, my Cardinals won, and my driver Jeff Gordon finished second in the NASCAR race. The Rusty Wallace Driving Experience is going on at the Milwaukee Mile race track about a quarter mile away, and we heard the engines roaring all day. It gave us a surround sound effect when we watched the NASCAR race on TV. :-)

See you tomorrow.

7 comments:

Janice Williford Evans said...

nothin' like a good baseball game. . .kinda wish we would have taken in a game while we were in the area. . .maybe next time! Enjoyed your pics. . .

Janice
ReadyToGoFullTimeRVing.blogspot.com

Dizzy-Dick said...

I love Top Fuel Drag Racing and the eliminations will be on TV tonight starting in about 20 minutes. I will be watching them. I just gave up my seats for the Houston area races this year. I had been going to them for ten years or so, so I know what the smell, feel, sound like. From now on I will just watch them on TV. Today they are in North Carolina.

Jim and Sandie said...

Hank seems to be as popular if not more so than the team. We don't get NASCAR on TV so Jim sits out in the truck and listens to it on Sirius Radio. Both my teams won today - the Cardinals and Redskins.

Jim and Judy said...

Did you have your customary big dog?

RV Khronicles of Kevelyn said...

Tailgating has been part of the baseball experience in Milwaukee as far back as I can remember. Glad you got to enjoy a game at our beautiful Miller Park. I remember well when it was built and the controversy that surrounded the decision. It was a sad day when three iron workers died when a crane collapsed. Perhaps you saw the statue in their memory at the entrance of the park. We used to have a 20 pack season tickets before fulltiming. My husband and son got to go to the all star game when it was held in Miller Park in 2001, a year later than originally slated due to the crane accident. Lots of good memories from Milwaukee baseball in our family!!

KarenInTheWoods said...

Yup, we saw all the cars in a standstill on the freeway heading to the game as we left your RV park. That was what, a couple hours before the game started? Happy People with smiling faces in a traffic jam, how cool is that?

(because they all knew where they going and it was gonna be fun!)

Bob and Jo said...

What a cute dog and a neat stadium.

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