It now takes all three of us to hold up enough fingers for our picture! American Family Field is stadium number 21 of 30. (It’s a good thing there are three of us, or this finger thing wouldn’t work at all!)
This stadium was particularly special for me. My college roommate, Julie Schmitt, and her husband, Paul, live in Milwaukee and joined us for the game. Julie and I haven’t seen one another since 1995, shortly after she was married! As you can well imagine, we spent quite a bit of time chatting and catching up.
Our Impressions of American Family Field
Of course, that visit did not interfere with our experience of the ballpark! We still got our stamps in our Ballpark Pass-Port, bought a hat for Ryan to add to his collection, wandered around the stadium, and sampled the food and non-alcoholic beer!
Brad and Ryan discovered a bingo game on the MLB app during this game, and had a great time tracking their progress. While Brad got bingo several times, none of them were early enough in the game to net him a prize. We have now discovered that other teams also have the bingo cards of plays, so they’ve played it at a couple of other stadiums.
American Family Field is one of the ballparks that has two seventh inning stretch songs. In addition to the traditional Take Me Out to the Ballgame, fans belt out the words to The Beer Barrel Polka (also known as Roll Out the Barrel) with gusto!
Our Seats: We were in the Field Infield Platinum Section 122, Row 10, Seats 5 through 7. Our guest, Paul, wanted to know whether we were giving them a hard time by choosing seats so near the opposing team’s dugout! I assured him that it was just a fluke. We chose the best seats within our budget for the game. However, we were surrounded by Minneapolis Twins fans.
The Food: In the land of beer and brats, we all enjoyed a Bratwurst with the traditional “secret sauce.” Described as a tangy tomato sauce similar to ketchup, the sauce paired well with sauerkraut, relish, and mustard.
Non-Alcoholic Beer Review: American Family Field offers Coors Edge as their non-alcoholic beer selection.
The Game Recap: 2 Home Runs for Housing!
Brewers short stop Willy Adams hit the first home run in the bottom of the first, giving the Brewers a 2 – 0 lead going into the second inning. It also gave us a chance to see the Brewers mascot, Bernie Brewer, slide down his slide to celebrate the play!
The Twins evened it up with a two-run home run by catcher Christian Vasquez in the second. In the fourth, the Twins scored another run, moving into a 3 to 2 lead over the Brewers.
Then came the sixth inning. The Brewers had seven consecutive hits, netting them five runs and putting them into a solid 7 to 2 lead. The Twins never recovered, and they lost the game three to seven.
There was one rather comical (to the crowd) play. In the top of the 9th, the Twins designated hitter Royce Lewis started out for second, only to realize he wouldn’t make it. Unfortunately, he slipped, then scrambled to dive for first. He missed it by about a yard and was tagged as he lay faced down in the base path, clearly aware that he had no chance of making it back to first.
Up Next:
As you may recall, our Cleveland game on August 18th was postponed due to foul weather. We were able to reschedule it for tomorrow, August 23rd. We’ll be getting up early and making the long drive from Racine, Wisconsin to Cleveland, Ohio, to get to the game at Progressive Field.
