Beer Pen with Mike + Pat
Besides the Buckethead Brigade (check out those pictures here), my other goal of the 2004 Milwaukee Brewers season was to sit in the Miller Lite Beer Pen. The Beer Pen is in the right field bleachers every Friday night home game, and for $10 (the normal price of a ticket) you get a cool retro Brewers Miller Lite t-shirt.
Mike and I showed up early so that we could catch a fly ball, which is something that I have yet to do all of my life, even though I go to at least 10 games a year. A couple came close, maybe even 6 feet away, but we didn't catch a fly ball. Well, there's always next year...
We didn't sit in the right field bleachers, because I only had 2 tickets (for 3 people) but we played around in the interactive zone, where I skipped ahead of some kids to play some free skee-ball.
The little kids had to wait while I mastered this lane. I had no problem playing two games in a row and making those little suckers wait an extra minute. I figure that I am entitled to play free skee-ball just as much as these kids.
I signed up for a credit card (I was eventually declined, to no surprise to me) so that I could get a free gift. At the Buckethead game, I got a towel, so this time I got a Brewers winter/snow hat.
Pat then joined us at our seats. We moved down to the field level in the right corner because a couple of foul ball shad already landed in that area. We were still hoping to catch a ball, so this seemed like a good idea. As soon as we sat in these seats, a foul ball landed in these seats that we just vacated. Oh well. Things went alright because I smuggled a bag of peanuts into the stadium, and we proceeded to de-shell them and eat them en masse.
7th inning and the Klement's Sausage race. The Bratwurst (#1 and my personal favorite) stuck it out and won the race. That made the crowd of nearly 40,000 stand on their feet and cheer like there was no tomorrow. You gotta love a city that goes nuts when a lunch meat crosses a finish line in a race featuring other lunch meats.
This was during one of the greatest celebrations in the sports world - the wave. I remember back in the day at County when the wave was a regular thing. That night at Miller, all 4 decks were getting into it, and we even switched up the speeds so that we were doing the wave ridiculously slow at some times and shockingly fast at others. It was a magical time.