Brewers vs Twins in Minnesota 2006

In the morning we went to this upscale pizza joint called PuncH. Basically, it's the yuppie version of pizza for the trendy and rich young adults. It does Italian food like Qudoba does for Mexican food and Noodles and Company does for noodle dishes. It was pretty good, but I had a hard time paying $8.95 for a personal sized pizza and a drink. I don't care if the recipe came directly from Italy; I don't have enough dollars, nor am I fancy enough to afford this.

I'm surprised at how many people don't know that I work at Miller Park, seeing as how I boast about how much I love my job, work nearly every home game, and the fact that I have been working there for over 5 years. For those of you who don't know, I work as an in-seat wait-staff in the seats on the Club Level. I work every home game that I am available for, which doesn't allow me to attend the games as a drunken and rowdy fan. My current financial situation, coupled with the fact that I'm not tied down allows me to currently follow the Brewers on the road for select games throughout the summer. On the last weekend of June in 2006, my best friend Mike and I drove up to Minneapolis to see the Brewers take on their former Al Central rival Twins. Mike went to school at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where he met Shaun and Jess, among others, and he still keeps in contact with them, and sees them several times a year. The Brewers vs. Twins series is always intense, and Shaun and Jess try to make it down to Milwaukee when they play at Miller Park every summer. Looks like Mike and I will have to venture up to Minnesota every summer to see them play at the Metrodome.

I'm going to be brutally honest, and it's not just because I'm a Brewers fan from Wisconsin, but the Metrodome is a real piece of sheeeeeeite. You can even go ahead and ask Twins fans; the stadium sucks for baseball. This is one of the reasons they are building a new stadium that will be opening in the next few years. If you want to know any more about this horrid structure, I suggest you visit the Wikipedia page devoted to it. Not only will you learn something, but you'll also most likely get sucked into the Wikipedia void as it gains a new member.

We (Shawn and I) bought general admission tickets, which allowed us to sit anywhere in the upper deck. Shawn, a Minnesota native and college buddy of Mike's, said that the best seats in the upper deck were the ones that we sat in. The picture on the left is the view from our seats. Mike was sitting down on the field level with his other friend Jess and Jess' boss. Jess is from Wisconsin, and is a Brewers fan, which meant that I was stranded with the only Twins fan in the group. It was ok though, because Shawn is a really nice guy and didn't rub it in too hard when the Twins beat the Brewers.

We tailgated briefly before the game, but it was nothing like Miller Park. The Metrodome is on the edge of downtown, so there aren't many parking lots. Fortunately, Mike knew these parts and directed us to one of the few lots that allowed you to fire up the grill and cook up some brats. We didn't finish all of our brats, so we left them for the scavengers. We returned to the car before Mike and Jess, so I took one of the remaining brats and stuck it underneath Mike's windshield wiper. We took off driving to the hip college bar part of town (think Water St) to meet some of his other friends, and he didn't notice it until right before we parked. I had watched Mike drive for nearly 10 minutes with a sausage right in front of him without laughing. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done because I knew that Mike would crack up laughing as soon as he saw it. I had to keep quiet until then, for it wouldn't be as good if I had ruined the surprise.

I eventually had to say something because it was just too funny to go unnoticed. Mike reached outside of his car and removed the sausage from his field of vision. I'm pretty sure that driving with impaired vision due to a sausage blocking your line of sight isn't very safe. So the joke ended and we went to the bar to meet his friends. After a little drama with some kids we didn't know out on the street (don't ask) we got some Quizno's and called it a night.