Miller Park

Anaheim Angels @ Milwaukee Brewers
June 23, 2002

Angels 5, Brewers 2

W: Kevin Appier
L: Ben Sheets
S: Troy Percival
HR: Tyler Houston (MIL)
Attendance: 23,751
Time of Game: 2 hours, 51 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Milwaukee, WI
First Game: April 6, 2001
Capacity: 41,900
Type: Retractable roof
Surface: Grass

I have been to many, many Brewers games in Milwaukee. My family and I used to go up there once a summer to do what everybody going to Brewers games does, tailgate, and catch a game. However, almost all of those games were in the old Milwaukee County Stadium. I have only been to Miller Park twice, with this trip in 2002 being the most recent visit. I went to this game just a week before I moved from Illinois to Virginia.

While I loved going to games at County Stadium, there is no comparison between the old park and the much improved Miller Park. In fact, Miller Park is distinctively different than even the other retractable roof stadiums with its fan-shaped roof. If you take away the roof, it has a very retro appearance from the outside, much like the other parks built around the same time. With the roof open, it doesn't quite have the same feel as a completely open park, largely due to the glass enclosures in the outfield. However, it is a huge improvement over a closed dome stadium. I would have preferred a strictly outdoor park in a city with reasonable weather for most of the baseball season, but so be it.

The park itself has never been, and probably never will be, the most distinctive part of the Brewers experience. Without a doubt, there is no better place in baseball to do a pregame tailgate than Miller Park. It is the only park where you would be out of place not hauling along a grill and a cooler. With garbage cans for charcoal dumping lining the parking lots, tailgating is not only allowed, but encouraged. The parking lots are abundant and easily accessible. Although I have never done it, I'm sure it is not unheard of to go to the park to tailgate but never actually make it into the game.

Fortunately, those who do make it into the park are treated to a very nice park with a lot of great seats. The four-tiered seating area bumps some of the upper level seats up quite high, but the view of the field is good. Perhaps the most distinctive part of the ballpark interior is the large video screen and scoreboard in center field and Bernie Brewer's slide in left. For those of you unfamiliar with Bernie, he's the mascot who goes down the slide after Brewers home runs. In the old park, the slide dumped him into a pitcher of beer. I don't believe that is the case in the new park, but I don't recall for sure.

Bernie isn't the only costumed entity at Brewers games. Another fan favorite is the sausage race, featuring people dressed up as your favorite types of sausages racing around the warning track during an inning break. Who can forget the infamous Randall Simon attack of the Italian Sausage? Versions of this tradition have since been copied by other teams, including Washington and Pittsburgh.

Miller Park plays very hitter friendly, largely due to the short power alleys. It isn't as unfair as some other parks though, especially with a lot of ground to cover in center field. I suppose it probably gets loud with the roof closed, but that was not the case for either game I've seen there. My seat for this game was in the upper deck on the first base side. I was in the fourth row, which provided a great view of the entire park.

This was the second time I saw the Angels play in June of 2002. Just like the game in Minnesota, Kevin Appier was the starting pitcher for the Halos. He pitched another solid game. The same can not be said for Brewers starter Ben Sheets. Apparently Sheets was healthy enough to pitch, for a change, but he was not effective. The Angels scored two runs in the first and three more in the second to take an early 5-0 lead. The big blow in the second was a three run, bases clearing double by Darin Erstad. The Brewers didn't score until a solo home run by Tyler Houston in the bottom of the 7th. The Angels held on for a 5-2 win.

I had forgotten how terrible the Brewers were back then to be until I looked at their lineup on this particular day. Jeffrey Hammonds hitting third pretty much sums it up. The Brewers loss dropped them to a pathetic 26-49. On the flip side, the Angels improved to 43-29 and were in second place at that time. That October, they went on to beat the Giants in seven games to win the 2002 World Series.

I hope to make it back to Milwaukee in the near future because Brewers games are always a lot of fun. Miller Park is not an elite park, but it is a great place to watch a game and a huge improvement over County Stadium. Hopefully they will continue to field competitive teams as they have the last couple years.

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Next stadium: Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore