I was hoping to keep my plans relatively secret and shock everyone when I ended up at a game, but I couldn't stay quiet that long.
The Brewers were hosting the White Sox in two exhibition games up in Milwaukee the weekend before the regular season began. That may seem undesirable, especially for a Cub fan like myself, but let me explain:
- All tickets were $10. It took me a day to realize how I could use this to my advantage. The special opportunity I had in mind may not come around again until next year, and I didn't want to let it pass by.
- The stadium would be half full. Tickets were only sold in the first two levels, and that didn't include the bleachers. That's 11,000 seats, tops. Even on a regular day in Milwaukee, finding some space in the outfield is usually pretty easy. With about a quarter of a normal crowd, I would essentially have no competition.
- I was all for starting my season two weeks early. I would be able to add one more game and pad my season ball total by a decently large margin if everything went as planned.
- One season goal would be crossed off the list, and I would get 6 points in the MyGameBalls.com photo scavenger hunt.
- I needed something to do. I was coming home for the weekend anyway, and had no plans for Saturday. This, combined with all the above, made it an easy decision to make the short drive up.
Now, let's discuss the first bullet point.
Miller Park has, without a doubt, the absolute best spot to catch foul balls in all of the Major Leagues. There is a HUGE cross aisle behind the plate, right below where the media and broadcasters sit. The protective net is just low enough to let foul tips get over and land in the sections in front of the aisle.
Why haven't I been there before? First, the tickets are way too expensive for most games. Upwards of $45. And a regular season game would have a bunch more people in that area. Definitely not worth it to catch (MAYBE) one ball.
Secondly, ushers don't let fans stand in there. I have no idea why. It would take a hundred people or more to cause any sort of inconvenience. I paid special attention last year, and was almost certain I saw people standing against the back wall, but that's not the case in 2013. I found out when I got to our seats that they STILL don't let people stand there, so it was a good thing I didn't buy tickets anywhere else.
If I WAS allowed to stand on the wall, I would have been right behind this seat for all right handed batters. Statistically, there's more right handed batters than lefties, so this was the best seat in the entire stadium for what I wanted to accomplish- finally getting a game used ball.
No matter the temperature outside, I expected the roof to be closed. When they shut the roof and windows they're able to maintain it at a balmy 65 degrees.
With less tickets sold comes less cars. The amount of people in the parking lots was WAY less than normal. Although, that didn't slow down the tailgaters one bit.
Kyra and I arrived 40 minutes before the gates opened, and took a lap starting at left field.
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| HI KYRA! |
When we passed home plate, it was about 11:15. I was a little alarmed to see the line of people waiting to get in just short of half an hour before the gates opened.
Now I started to walk faster. If the outfield gates were like this, I was in trouble.
We continued around the first base side, the most abandoned area outside Miller Park.
There was not a single soul at the right field gates. I couldn't see any stadium employees or even a turnstile inside. Clearly, my usual strategy of being the first fan in right field wouldn't work.
Making our way back to left field, I remembered to look through the window to see if the cage was out. If it was up to me, I would have been here last night. Unfortunately Kyra was busy, and I got a free ride home for waiting an extra day.
It was a toss up. I had no idea what teams think on days like this. The sole purpose of Spring Training was to practice, right? But was this still Spring? Were guys resting for the opening game on Monday?
Who cares what the reasoning is, all I know is that I was happy to see guys on the field.
Even though it looked just as desolate at the right field gate, the usher scanning tickets for Friday's assured me left field would open at 11:40.
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It was only a couple minutes until ushers unlocked the doors and let us step in side. I was right there, ready to go. One lady was training a new employee, so she asked to scan my ticket a good five minutes before people were allowed in. I prepared myself like an Olympic sprinter, ready to burst through the turnstile and make my way up to the bleachers.
That didn't go as well as I had hoped. Let me try to diagram what happened:
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| Quit laughing, I ain't no artist. |
After passing multiple sections on the 100 level, I finally found someplace to go up. I started to run as fast as I could up three levels of ramps, thinking of how much easier the stupid escalator would have been. (The different colors represent a change in altitude). Well, I guess I can just go ahead and forget about the Easter Eggs.
After that fiasco, where I wasted about three minutes, I got my first look of the season, and got to work.
I watched for about five minutes, and realized it wasn't going to be a good day. Most of the hits in my direction were looping fly balls that landed in the shallow parts of the outfield. Any well hit balls were towards right field, or right below the scoreboard in center. It was pretty odd and quite frustrating. It stayed that way for pretty much all of BP.
I don't want to rely on toss ups anymore, but since nothing was coming my way, I reluctantly pulled out my rosters. I had six windows up on my iPhone- the 40 man and coaching staff, as well as the non-roster invitees for both teams. I only ended up needing one of them.
Those three guys are all I had to go on. As I said last year, even the front row of the bleachers in this spot is about 40 feet up from the field. Needless to say, this sucked.
However, BP wasn't a total bust. In fact, I came up here for more reasons than to just catch balls.
If you read my last entry, I made one of my season goals to meet another Ballhawk. I put that one on the list while in the process of talking on Twitter with a guy named Shawn, a regular in Milwaukee. Lucky for me, he was at this game as well. We exchanged phone numbers and ran into each other half way through BP.
Shawn has caught over 1700 balls, including 23 game home runs. In 2010, he caught homers hit by Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, and Lastings Milledge, AND his 1,000th ball....ALL in the same weekend.
Even though he has me beat in every category, he wanted to know about my collection and my plans for the season ahead. He gave me some tips about Miller Park, and some strategies for how to be a better Ballhawk overall. I graciously accepted the advice and tried to give him some tips about Wrigley as well. He's never been inside, and plans to visit Chicago a few times this season to visit my home park and that other place on the South Side. I look forward to meeting up with him again sometime later in the summer once the season really gets going.
After BP ended uneventfully, I wanted to check out our seats. It was just a short walk from left field to the plate.
I couldn't wait for the game to start. This was an absolute gold mine. My mouth was almost watering just thinking about all the room I had.
Check out a better shot of the back wall- every mark on there was a foul ball. That doesn't include the hundreds more that fell into the surrounding sections on the fly, either.
We had about 20 minutes until first pitch, so we went to grab some food.
When going through my schedule, I happened to see that I would be in Milwaukee for (probably) five games. I decided to do another fun thing, something I call "The Cycle of Sausages".
On the off chance you don't know, the Brewers have five people put on suits of giant encased meats and race from left field to right field in the middle of the 6th inning. It was the first mascot race of it's kind, and a good time is had by any fan who witnesses it in person. I was lucky enough to personally meet all five sausages back in 2007.
During every game at Miller Park this year, I will consume one of the sausages. I didn't want to go too wild and try the Polish or Chorizo for the first time on the very first day, so I went with the good old hot dog. Complete with ketchup, onions, and (a little too much) Koop's brown mustard.
Can't you see the resemblance?
I mentioned at the beginning that the roof was closed, but it's still weird to be inside. This was only the third (and a half- it closed in the middle of the game once) time I watched a game under a roof. When you're up on the Terrace Level, it's super freaky to be so close to such a huge structure.
Here's a picture from the middle of the game, just to give you an idea of how many people were in the park.
First pitch from Burke Badenhop to Alejandro De Aza:
As you can see, the Brewers were already ahead 2-0 in the 1st. Rickie Weeks smacked a two run homer off of Gavin Floyd.
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| Weeks is the one mid high five with the Bat Boy. |
I was intently watching every pitch, waiting for my chance to pounce on a foul tip. I was nowhere near the first couple that flew back, but I took note of their flights and landing spots.
In the second inning, Martin Maldonado stepped in to face Jose Quintana. On the 1-2 pitch, he made just enough contact to pop it up over the net, about 25 feet to my left.
I bolted. I even surprised myself at how fast I moved. As I was still in the process standing up, I thought to myself "Holy crap, I'm all over this". It even went to my favorable side. All I had to do was stand up and I was already a step and a half closer to it.
The cross aisle was completely empty. There was no chance for anyone to get in my way. I moved my focus back and forth from the ball and the walkway, while still shuffling to my left.
I realized pretty quickly I wasn't going to beat it to the landing spot. I watched the ball get closer and closer, and was sincerely hoping it wouldn't bounce back somewhere where someone else could get to it before me.
It hit the back wall first, right below the sign that had "620 AM" on it. I saw it ricochet from the wall to the ground, and luckily it stayed low enough to hit the backs of the seats instead of going over them. The ball came to rest about three feet from the back of the seats. Yet another lucky break; it decided not to roll under the seats into the 10th row.
I looked forward to see nobody but an usher standing 15 feet in front of me. I didn't even have to worry about accidentally slamming into anyone.
I made it over the the ball, and covered it with my bare hand, then quickly picked it up. YES!
The reaction from the fans closest to where it landed made it even better. They didn't even know what happened. It was like I came out of nowhere and swept the ball up before they even saw it.
I walked back to my seat, where I got a fist bump from an usher and a high five from the Dad sitting next to Kyra. I overheard the him say to his son "You see, THAT'S what you do when you want to catch a ball!"
Upon further inspection, this was an awesome one. First of all, it had the nice dark tint and grainy feel from the rubbing mud like all game balls should.
On one side, it had a blue mark from making contact with the wall:
And one more AWESOME thing I didn't expect- pine tar!
It's a little hard to see due to the lighting and the fact it dried over a few hours. When I first caught it, there was a nice dark, sticky brown spot on there. I had to wrap it in a napkin so it wouldn't get on anything else I had in my bag.
I felt really accomplished. I didn't get any BP balls, but I did exactly what I came up here to do. I set a goal and achieved it. Snagging a game used ball is something I've wanted to do for the past two seasons, and even though it wasn't on my official list of goals this year, I can now proudly check it off the Ballhawk (and baseball fan) bucket list.
I wasn't paying attention to anything else on the field besides foul tips. There were about a dozen hit in these sections throughout the day. I should have been more aggressive on the ones hit to my right.
Three balls were hit (literally) inside the media area down there at the far side. All three took a couple weird bounces in there and popped back out into the aisle. That extra bounce or two would have given me enough time to get over there and get in on the jump balls that ensued. That's my only regret. It would have been really bad-ass if I came home with three foul balls.
As far as the game goes, I don't have much to say. Pitchers were only out there for an inning each, and most position players were out there for no more than two. I would give you a summary, but the box score ceases to exist. I guess this game (or any practice game) didn't matter that much to document. If Major League Baseball didn't think it was important enough, I'm not going to waste my time on it.
Italian won the Sausage Race, so I decided he will be the next victim when I'm here in May.
The Brewers rallied for three runs in the bottom of the 8th to take a 5-4 lead. By then the game was going on three hours. I was actually happy the Brewers got the lead. "Yay, now we can leave sooner!", I exclaimed when the go ahead run came across.
John Axford already pitched in the 2nd inning, so the Crew brought in a minor leaguer to clean up the save.
Here I am with my single ball, the very first game used one of my Ballhawking career. I thought it would be cool to stand next to the wall it deflected off of instead of having the field behind me.
I'm pretty sure this is the mark it made. The sizes match up and there weren't very many close to where it first hit.
I gathered some of the MyGameBalls.com Scavenger Hunt points by taking my picture with Shawn. He's caught the most balls at Miller Park that are reported on the site, so that's two points. I also tried to pick up two more by finding the commemorative County Stadium home plate. That proved to be a lot harder than I thought. Kyra and I walked around the parking lot for about 10 minutes before giving up. Alas, that's how I got the very first picture.
That's one down, seventeen to go!
STATS
- 1 ball at this game
- 1 ball total this season
- 6 consecutive games with a ball
- 33 lifetime balls
- NEW! - Time Spent at Game: 5 hours, 45 minutes
I got the idea for the last stat from Ben Rouse, who went to every single Brewers game last year, home and away. All 162. I will in no way match Ben, but I thought it would be interesting to see how much time I devoted to baseball.
I originally wanted to do a "door to door" time, which would start when I left for the game, and end when I got home. I threw that out quickly, because Kyra and I took multiple detours on our way home. That showed me it's easy to get distracted. Plus, with my trips, would I count that as 72 full hours, or call the hotel my home for those nights? Too many variables. Instead, the clock starts when I step onto the stadium grounds, and stops when I pull out of the parking lot and/or the park is no longer in sight.
I originally wanted to do a "door to door" time, which would start when I left for the game, and end when I got home. I threw that out quickly, because Kyra and I took multiple detours on our way home. That showed me it's easy to get distracted. Plus, with my trips, would I count that as 72 full hours, or call the hotel my home for those nights? Too many variables. Instead, the clock starts when I step onto the stadium grounds, and stops when I pull out of the parking lot and/or the park is no longer in sight.
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