House of Swank: Never Too Old for a Frat Party

I am thankful that my fourth major league baseball stadium to catch a game at was Miller Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We had almost attended a White Sox game that freezing cold day, and I am happy to report that Miller Park has a roof.

The Brewers were playing the Cubs that day, and I'm sure a lot of my impressions were based on that fact, as at least half the fans in the seats that sell-out day were Cubs fans. Sweetie says past games he's attended were not nearly so well attended.

The stadium itself is eh. With the roof closed (which I am very grateful it was that day) you are in a completely enclosed building with frosted glass windows, so you get that dome feeling that does not exactly sing baseball. But it's comfortable, the scoreboard is really nice, and there are a few nice touches (although, honestly, I can't remember what they are right now).

The game operations felt very minor league to me. They had several promotions that involved pulling fans out to answer a trivia question to win a prize or some such. Even the ubiquitous "which hat is the baseball under" promotion they pull a fan out of the stands to guess which hat the baseball ends up under. Really, why do you need someone to do this? It works fine on it's own, why give away a darn prize?

The one cool promotion that they have is the sausage race, in which guys dressed up as a hot dog, Polish sausage, Italian Sausage, Bratwurst, and (new this year!) Chorizo, race around the diamond at the bottom of the sixth inning. This is a brilliant promotion on many levels, it's sponsored by a local sausage company and really displays part of the culture of the town. I had really been looking forward to this. However, the folks at Miller Park aren't content with just running the promo, but remind you several times during the game that it's coming up. Which, really, seems a bit overkill to me. Before the game, when they had the reminder to be in your seats bottom of the sixth so as not to miss it, I was OK with that, because I didn't want to miss it. But it came up again several times during the game. For the record, Polish won that day.

But the atmosphere is what really stuck with me that day. I'm sure part of it had to do with the fact that the arch rivals were facing each other, but I'm sure part of it is always there. Combine cheap beer (I decided to embrace the cheapness and have a PBR with my nachos that day) with a blue color town, and you get a bunch of drunk guys just interested in doing more drinking. And yelling and screaming a lot. The game seemed tangential to a lot of guys in attendance, and really just an excuse to yell at the guys from the opposing side. We had the pleasure of sitting right between some very vocal Cubs fans and one particularly vocal and drunk Brewers fan, so got the full effect in stereo. Thankfully, our Milwaukee friend left around the middle of the third inning, so we were spared that for the rest of the game.

Sweetie said it was even worse in the men's restrooms. When I try to picture it I only come up with images reminiscent of the Lord of the Flies.

It was a fun game, in part because Crazy Carlos Zambrano (House of Swank pitcher) got a win for me, but I don't feel the need to visit Miller Park again.