Not At Fenway

25 August 2016


Corn...grass...state border...farm...cows...state border...more corn...more corn. We covered Cleveland to Milwakee, ending the day around 1/3 through our trip at 1,200 miles. It wasn't nearly as beautiful as our first two days of driving, but for 7 hours it went by quickly. We spent a portion of the drive listening to many of the songs and artists we had heard yesterday at the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. I still can't believe that we spent 6 hours in there. I think it was a combination of how engaging it was with the lack of plans to go anywhere else.

For lunch and fuel we stopped at the Notre Dame campus. Pathetic and east-coat-centric, I had no idea Notre Dame was in Indiana. Given its great football team and my mental image of the fighting irish I thought it was a southern school. And after being on the campus it definitely is a southern school in the north. They were doing construction on the football stadium so we couldn't get too close but we got a look at it nonetheless.

Around 5PM or maybe it was 4, we arrived in Milwakee. The time zone had changed not long before we passed Chicago and though we were conscious of it at the time, it tripped us up later. We had just settled in our motel room when I realized it was nearly 6PM and we were surely running late to the game since we wanted to grab dinner beforehand and still have time to get tickets. We rushed out the door and were three minutes down the sidewalk when I started to say, "If this was an hour before game time at fenway we wouldn't be able to move for walking," when I checked my phone. It was only 5PM. We had two hours before the game and we were only a ten minute walk away.

Turning around, we ducked into a small local bar called "4th Base". Inside, every surface was covered in some baseball, football, or basketball collectible. The walls and ceiling had signed jerseys in frames and signed photos. On a shelf above the horseshoe bar was every college football helmet and every pro football helmet. And the rest of the space had three large TVs and a couple of old arcade games. They had a good selection of local beers that we tried and a crazy menu. In fact there was not a paper menu at all. You had to go look at the options in a case and decide what you want. As the prices were appropriate for what it was, but still very high for such a place, we thought their method was to get you to see something delicious and order it without asking for the price. This was nearly effective as we saw the portabello mushrooms filled with crab meat, but for $30 we couldn't do it.

Exactly an hour after we had realized we screwed up the time change, we were back out on the sidewalk headed for the game. It was as un-fenway as possible. No crowds, no body walking on the street because the sidewalk is full, just a few people here and there walking towards the stadium. When we came up towards the ticket booth there was a man who caught our eye and asked us if we wanted two tickets for seats right behind home plate. It was hard to believe our luck, but this guys was really offering us $60 seats for $20. And so five minutes later we were sitting 9 rows back. Of course we were at a Brewers vs. Pirates game. Both of whom are 20 games back from the Cubs in the NL Central.

We saw three homeruns and some exciting plays as the Brewers battled back against the Pirates to tie it 2-2. They ended up losing in the 10th when the Pirates finally broke the tie. But it was not the Red Sox so there was no nail biting, disappointment, or criticism to be had. Just a good ol' baseball game.