M-M-M-Miller

Miller Park marks the 29th MLB baseball stadium we’ve been to and undoubtedly will rank among our favorites.

The beauty of the day (Memorial Day 2009) probably accounts for some of our pleasure with Miller Park but we would have loved the stadium anyway. We saw an afternoon game with the bright sun warming our backs. Everyone around us was having a good time. The game itself was a pitchers’ duel with no hits until the 6th inning, with the Brewers beating archrival St. Louis 1-0 in 10 innings.

Milwaukee’s Yovani Gallardo gave up just 2 hits over 8 innings , while the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter had a perfect game until the 7th inning. Bill Hall won the game for the Brewers with a two-out single, scoring Casey McGehee, who reached first to start on the inning on an error by third baseman Brian Barden.

Miller Park has an old-time baseball feel even though it opened in 2001 and has a fan-shaped retractable roof. There’s lots of brick on the exterior. Arched windows circle the stadium. There are a number of statues in the front, including one of Hank Aaron.

The park, with construction starting in 1996, had been scheduled to open in 1999 and was to have been the site for the 1999 All Star game. But financing problems stalled the construction (the original $250 million cost went to $400 million), as well as a crane accident in July 1999 that killed three construction workers. There’s a monument to the workers near the front of the stadium (see photo). The All Star game was finally played at Miller Park in 2002.

The field has a huge color screen past center field, as well as a scoreboard that stretches 76 feet. Past left-center field is a yellow slide for the mascot, Bernie the Brewer, to slide down. Inside the park is a Brewers Hall of Fame and the Miller Park Kids Zone play area.

We were told a must-have for lunch was a brat. I tried one and was disappointed, a Johnsonville brat would have been better than the one I had. Alta had a huge pretzel (10-12 inches across) that was dipped in melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Sausage as well as beer is a definite feature of Miller Park. Beside the kind you eat, there is a “sausage race” during the 7th inning stretch, when “Roll Out the Barrel” is played on the loudspeakers.

We walked to the park from our motel (Best Western Woods View Inn on National Avenue), a 20-minute walk past a VA hospital and through a wooded park. A very nice experience on a beautiful day. The park is adjacent to Wood National Cemetery, established in 1871 originally for the burial of Civil War veterans. Among those buried there are five Medal of Honor recipients. Since we were there on Memorial Day weekend flowers, flags and personal mementos had been placed on all the grave sites (photo).

Doomed Dome

The Minnesota Twins’ ballpark since 1982, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, is in its final season in 2009. It will be replaced in 2010 by Target Field. I doubt anyone will be sorry to see the Metrodome go.

We’ve been to games in 28 of the ballparks for the 30 Major League Baseball teams, plus the old Olympic Stadium in the Montreal Expos last season. Olympic Stadium was really bad and the Metrodome is nearly as bad.

When I walked into the Metrodome for a Twins game against the Milwaukee Brewers on May 23, I felt like it was the 1960s and I was in the old arena where the National Western Stock Show was held in Denver.

A narrow, concrete concourse winds around the park’s exterior, with a few concession stands sprinkled around. You can’t see the game from the concourse, unless you try to peak through guarded gates. We sat in the second level. After taking stairs to that level, we were told (politely but firmly) by a guard at the top of the stairs that we couldn’t go back to the first level. That’s to make sure that low-lifes like us couldn’t try to find better seats later in the game.

The seats, at least in the second level, were built so that we had to look around the heads of fans in front of us to see home plate. There also isn’t any leg room. The sound system reverberates with a hollow sounds that makes it difficult to understand the announcer. And the plastic turf looks like faded green carpet that’s been left out in the Minnesota winters.

Again following the advice of the New York Times, we tried the carved turkey sandwich from the Minnesota Carvery, located behind Section 132 on the ground level (don’t try to sneak back down from the second level after the game starts). The Times was right about the moist and flavorful turkey, although that’s all you get on your sandwich, no lettuce, no tomato, no nothing. It does come with a Caesar salad, but you can scrape that off your plate without trying it unless you just have to have lettuce.

When you leave the Metrodome through one of the regular doors, you get pushed out by the air pressure pumped into the stadium to keep the dome up. You can also use the carousel-like entry, which prevents the wind-tunnel effect.

The real highlight of going to a Twins home game (I’m sure the smaller Target Field due to open in April 2010 will be better), is going to Minneapolis. We loved everything we saw in Minneapolis in the 2 days we were there. We stayed in a great (and reasonable) hotel, the Aloft Hotel on Washington Avenue South in the Mill District near the Mississippi River. Nearby is the gorgeous new Guthrie Theater complex, the Saturday Farmers’ Market, Stone Arch Bridge across the river, the Sculpture Garden, and St. Anthony Falls (the latter is the reason Minneapolis was such a mill town).

Target Field, which will cost about $480 million, is still adjacent to downtown Minneapolis. It’s being built by the same architect (Populous) that build Baltimore’s Camden Yards, PNC Park in Pittsburgh and AT&T Park in San Francisco. We read that the grass for the new park will be from Colorado. The sod got its initial inspection by Twins officials this year.

Since this is the last year for the Metrodome, the Twins are collecting votes for the top moments in the park’s history. My vote goes to tearing it down.

Treking at Kauffman

There are three main reasons to go to a baseball game, besides the game itself. First, there’s the park experience. Next, discovering the hometown faves and unique foods (think fried Twinkies). Finally, it’s watching the fans.

We visited three parks in May – Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, the Metrodome in Minneapolis and Miller Park in Milwaukee. Miller Park was the best of the three, but more about that later.

At Kauffman Stadium we expected the entertainment to be led by the best pitcher in baseball this year, Zack Greinke, who had a 0.60 ERA and 7 wins going into the game against the Cleveland Indians. But Greinke had an off-day for him, exiting after 6 innings. The Royals led at that point, 3-2, but went on to lose, 8-3, as their bullpen went into freefall.

Midway through the game we noticed a fan, a young man probably taking the afternoon off work on a glorious Thursday afternoon, reading a book between innings. Turns out he was more than halfway through “Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls,” one of the latest in that series. Captain Jean-Luc Picard has to stop the soldiers of Armageddon as they lay waste to worlds. You could cast Greinke in the lead role and the Indians as the evil soldiers, but in that case Picard is gone (living to fight another day) and Armageddon wins.

We’d (at least I had) been looking forward to some famous Kansas City barbeque at Kauffman. The New York Times did a story last year about the best ballpark food and listed the barbeque from the Gates and Sons Bar-B-Q stand at the stadium. Turns out that the $250 million renovation of Kauffman Stadium, completed in 2008, saw the exit of Gates. There’s now another BBQ stand but we opted for what one of the customer service reps said was the best food – the $9 chicken quesadilla at the Rivals Sports Bar past right field. If we go back to Kauffman, we’ll be looking for something else to eat.

Kauffman Stadium is one of the oldest MLB parks, opening in 1973. The renovation has made it feel new, and much of it is. The concourse is twice as wide as it was, opening up space for more vendors and concession stands. You also can walk the main concourse clear around the park, stopping in centerfield to enjoy a fountain celebration (photo), and the cascading waterfalls in left field ($7 game tickets for the Fountain Seats). Kauffman also has what is the biggest JumboTron in any park I’ve been in.