As I stood awkwardly looking for an outlet, someone made a comment about my Toronto Blue Jays cap, which had already been successful in luring both a set of Jays haters and a group of friendly Canadians. In fact, the first people I met in Chicago were a group of guys from Philadelphia who asked me what I thought of Joe Carter before even so much as asking my name. Naturally, they were not too happy to see anything to do with the Blue Jays.
Luckily for me, this turned out to be a group of Torontonians who were more than happy to see a guy wearing a Jays cap, so I sat down with them and talked as I dumped my photos on my computer. After a while a full blown party had erupted around us as a group of European students studying law in a nearby town joined us and a pair of young ladies from Australia. Others came and went, and after an indeterminate number of beers, we all decided to hit the town.
I was hesitant to joining my new found travel friends knowing that the train to Milwaukee left at 8:30am the next morning and that I was prone to Frank the Tank moments under similar circumstances, but even though I was a few years removed from the good ol' college days, I couldn't refuse.
The first bar we went to closed down shortly after 1:30am, but like many of the nights from the aforementioned good ol' college days, we were just getting warmed up. We quickly found another bar, and when I went for the first round of drinks, I asked the bartender when last call was, to which he replied 3:45.
Yes, yes we did.
After another solid two hours, we were slowly being herded, drunker than skunks towards the front door by the security guard who was either very entertained by the antics of us crazy Canadians or very unimpressed. I couldn't tell.
The five of us piled in a cab and sometime shortly after 4:30am we made our way back inside the hostel. My new found friends weren't done, but I was and called it a night hoping that two and a half hours would be enough time to at least sober up before setting off for Milwaukee.
I almost got lost downtown, but I did make it to the train station in time to catch the 8:30 train. It was actually easy to figure out where to go, I just followed all the Pittsburgh Pirates jerseys, the Brewers opponent later in the day. In the middle of a sports crazed city like Chicago, following Pirates jerseys was a safe strategy to say the least.
The train ride was actually a lot of fun. It's a mode of transportation that I haven't taken advantage of nearly enough in my life, but I find it a wonderfully relaxing way to travel. The hour and half flew by pretty quickly as we made our way out of the suburbs of north Chicago and seemingly in the blink of an eye into downtown Milwaukee.
My first impression of Milwaukee was one of being weirded out. I arrived at 10am on Labour Day, and I think it not unreasonable to expect people milling about at this time of day on a holiday in a big city. Not so. As I walked out of the train station, there was nobody. Not a single soul walking down the street any direction I looked.
I had decided before I left that as long as the weather was reasonable, that instead of waiting an hour for the express busses between downtown and the ball park to start running that I would take the hour long walk along the Hank Aaron Trail to get to the stadium. It was cloudy, but seemed to be little threat of rain, so I set off.
The walk along the trail was equally strange. Numerous cyclists passed me, but during the entire hour long walk I again saw no one walking anywhere. There were people in cars, motorcycles, on bikes, but no pedestrians. It was disconcerting as I wondered the entire time if maybe I missed something, some sign or common notion that walking was prohibited in Milwaukee.
I could see Miller Park off in the distance almost immediately, which quelled any notion that I was going the wrong way which, upon getting off the train, was a legitamate worry for me. It got bigger and bigger until I made my way to one of the ginormous parking lots that surrounded the stadium. At that point I stopped and put on my vintage style Brewers jersey and tried my best not to look awstruck as I took in the stadium.
Two hours before game time and the parking lots were full of Brewers fans tailgating. Kids were playing catch on the small patches of grass while their parents barbequed and drank beer. It was the sort of scene you would expect to see before every baseball game if the space existed to allow it. It was a much different experience than approaching the SkyDome or Safeco Field in their downtown locations, surrounded on all sides by roadways and other buildings.
The roof looked a bit goofy, but the outside of the stadium was beautiful, surrounded by statues of the Brewer greats. I circled it a few times to take it all in, knowing that I had some time to kill before the gates opened.
When I finally did get inside, I was amazed at the sheer size of the place. The concourse was enormous. Food stands, beer stands, merchandise stands, they were everywhere. Everything you could possibly imagine wanting at a ballpark was there. There were a lot of areas set up with historical plaques, it was almost like little pieces of a museum scattered among the usual ballpark fare.
After a long lap of the concourse to plan my food sampling, I made my way to my seat in right field and watched the Pirates take batting practice. I focused mainly on the players in the outfield shagging balls and goofing around a bit since I hadn't actually made it to a ball game early enough to see it as an adult. I purposely took the early train so that I could see BP and it was very interesting seeing the guys running around and plain having fun before the game.
I don't actually remember much about the game. I know the Pirates won and the crowd was very tame and that September probably isn't the best time to go watch a last place team play baseball. The Brewers had lost their star player to suspension, a player who had pleaded innocence for using performance enhacing drugs. The fans were behind him, the team was behind him. He was the face of the franchise. When I got my ticket in the mail, the accompanying schedule had his picture on the front of it. Having that all turned upside down in the midst of a disastrous season equals a crowd that can understandably be hard pressed to muster enthusiasm for anything other than their resident Japanese player Norichika Aoki making a nice play in the field.
It was a real shame, because there are a lot of things Miller Park is known for that I think would make the atmosphere a lot of fun if there was good baseball to watch. The sausage race, the slide in center field that the mascot goes flying down after a Brewers home run (of which there were zero in this game), the tailgating, and while Milwaukee is a smaller market, I've always associated the Brewers as being a team with a proud history and a tradition of good baseball. To see the fans at the game watching with seemingly nothing to get excited about is unfortunate, but sometimes you have to get through the bad times to truly enjoy the good times.
-matt
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