Take Me Out to the Ballgame

On Sunday, 7 friends and I headed north to Milwaukee for the day to see the Cubs - Brewers game at Miller Park. We have kinda made going to a Cubs game an annual event, despite that, a few of us are Cardinals fans.

It was and early day for me. Up at 5 am to get ready and meet up by 7 am to head out. We had to take two vehicles since all 8 of us couldn't fit (at least comfortably and legally) in one vehicle. Actually, we started out with 3 vehicles, but one got dropped off on the way. On the way back home, we dropped him off at the motel he was staying at that night in the Kankakee area.

We got to Miller Park within 4 hours of leaving town. We got there fairly early and got great parking in the General Parking area (front row actually) and did a little tailgating. Really hated to, but I had to use the porta-potties and they were out of the hand sanitizer. GROSS!

If we go back to a game in Milwaukee, we should take a grill and some brats or something to cook. We had bagels & cream cheese, fruit, cheese & crackers, salami, assorted chips, and naturally, some beer. Though, why should we bring the grill and brats when we get a free hot dog and a small soda with each ticket.

There were a lot of Cubs fans there, I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised since Milwaukee is only about an hour north of Chicago.

The game started at 1:05 pm and we headed into the stadium a little after noon. The first time most of us had seen a game in a closed stadium, though it has a retractable roof. It's just not the same being closed-in, no out-of-the-park homeruns. Our seats were up on the 4th level. They weren't great seats, but not bad either. We could see almost everything, except plays that happened right below us, never had that problem at Wrigley Field, especially in the bleachers. At Wrigley Field, we are "bleacher bums" and proud of it. We had the four seats on the aisle in two rows. My seat was actually on the aisle and it was great except that it was on the aisle and had to be careful of the people walking up and down the fairly narrow stairs with a railing in the middle and them spilling beer on me, dripping melted butter on me, or even nearly getting hit by the beer or peanut/cracker jack vendors.

Got my free hot dog and small soda and even paid $6.25 for a helmet of cheese waffle fries which were fantastic, but I couldn't finish them alone. Meghan had to help me eat them and we didn't even finish all of them. The nachos looks soooo good, but didn't get to try them.

I think it was during the "6th inning stretch", they had the sausage race. It was 5 guys dressed in 5 different types of sausages race along the sidelines. It was hysterical. And then during the traditional "7th inning stretch", did the usual Take Me Out to the Ballgame and also Roll Out the Barrel, and and also Kate Smith singing God Bless America. It actually started with God Bless America.

The game went fast, normally they last about 3 hours but it was over in less than 2-1/2 hours. Unfortunately, the Cubs lost. It was cool when they set off fireworks inside the stadium. We stayed there and watched the rest of the Mets game on the screen. I am not a Mets fan and was happy when they lost along with all the Brewers fans since with the Brewers winning and the Mets losing, the Brewers became the division champs. After the Mets game was over, they released blue and metallic gold confetti from the rafters and I brought a few of them back with me.

We then headed back out to the parking lot with the remaining people. On the walk over the bridge, two 'girls' were about to fight over who was the better team - the Cubs or the Brewers. It wasn't going to get too bad of a fight since there were cops all over the place and only a few feet away, just a lot of yelling at each other and their friends 'holding' them back. We stood out in the lot for a while talking and getting heckled by a few drunken Brewers fans. We loaded back into the vehicles and then head towards home. It took us forever with all the traffic.

When we finally made it through Milwaukee and then through Chicago and into Matteson to get a burger at Fuddruckers (they have fantastic burgers) and we almost ran out of gas in the van I was in. The estimated miles remaining was 0 as we pulled into the gas station. There was probably a gallon left in the tank. I couldn't eat all of my burger at Fuddruckers and I ordered the smallest burger they had and only ate 1/2 of the fries. And it didn't help that I was so tired.

We headed towards home. We got back to our original meeting place about 9:30 and I was home within minutes since I actually lived the closest. I got ready and after getting some things done headed for bed and it didn't take long for me to get to sleep.

It was such a fun day, but also so darn long. Was gone for something like 15 hours.