Our frequent traveling partners, Admiral Bob and Madame Cipolle, were unable to join us for the festivities; something about a little car race in Indy on the same weekend. Nevertheless, Momma Cuan and I still managed to enjoy ourselves, as we always do in the beer drinking capital of North America, Milwaukee. Here are some reflections on our excursion.
* We have been staying the past several years at the Ambassador Hotel, a renovated art deco structure which sits on the very western edge of downtown. Two blocks to the east is Marquette University, home of the Warriors (I mean, the Golden Eagles). Two blocks to the west is the hood. There are two main features which attract us to the Ambassador. First, the hotel runs a shuttle service for its guests, taking them anywhere within a four mile radius. In all the years we've stayed at the Ambassador, we have only desired transportation to three or four places outside that radius, in which case we've driven ourselves or taken a cab. Our usual M.O. is to park our car in the hotel lot when we arrive, and not get in it again until departure day. Two of our three favorite hotel employees are shuttle drivers, Santiago and Sam, who have been working that job for several years. Santiago, a bald headed philosopher with a ring in his ear, has the unique ability to tell you his life story and cures for the world's ills, all within the duration of a ten minute ride. He is a guitarist and loves his motorcycle. If he had a patch over an eye he could pass for one of Captain Hook's pirates. Sam is a retired Milwaukee city fire fighter who took early retirement but decided working part-time as a driver was better than trying to keep up with his honey-do list around the house. Sam and his wife have a cabin near Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, and he told us it's bigger than his residence in Milwaukee. Thank God for defined benefit pensions for public employees! Sam's best talent is the ability to give his passengers the low down on all the Milwaukee eateries, watering holes and attractions. He has never given us a bum steer.
The Ambassador's other main feature which is a big plus for us is the hotel bar, aka the Envoy Lounge. It is here that you'd find the third of our favorite employees, Chris. He is what I think of as the model bartender, because he is attentive without being annoying, he knows how to fix a mixed drink, and he's not stingy filling up the wine or draught beer glass. Either he remembered Momma Cuan and me from our previous stays, or he is a very good actor. When you return to the hotel after an evening on the town, it is nice to have the option of enjoying a nightcap in the Envoy before calling it a night. A word of caution, however: Don't order a Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey unless you're willing to fork over fourteen smackers for the shot. That sticker shock reminded me of why I'm a beer drinker.
One thing we didn't know about the Ambassador before this most recent visit: They have a pillow menu. If you don't like the pillows they put in your room, select a different one from the pillow menu and the housekeeping people will fulfill your request. We started out with medium fiber-filled, and ended up with soft down-filled. To my knowledge, I have never stayed in a place that offered that service, but then for the rate I usually pay at the Motel 6, you can't have everything.
* On Monday evening we were waiting with another couple from Boston for the shuttle to take us downtown. They appeared to be about our age. We struck up a conversation for a few minutes before boarding. When the van pulled up, Mary and I crawled onto far back bench seat, and as the Bostonians got into the middle seat the guy noticed that I had my arm around Mary. The man jokingly asked, "Say, do you know that woman you're sitting with?" to which I replied, "Only for forty-one years." With that, his female companion turned around and exclaimed, "No! You two aren't old enough to know each other that long!" When we told them we'd been married for thirty-seven years, she still had an incredulous look. That made my day, even though she was undoubtedly focusing more on Mary.
* We discovered a new bar to patronize before heading to Miller Park. Saz's is located on State Street, about two miles directly north of the stadium and a stone's throw west of the huge Miller Brewery. Saz's strong suit is barbecue ribs, and the beer selection is impressive. We sat in the bar area, which has the feel of a neighborhood gathering spot that gets busy in a hurry when the regulars show up. The bar itself is circular and small enough to facilitate chatter among most of the stool occupants. In addition to the bar area, there are two other dining rooms. The walls in every room are covered with Wisconsin sports posters, pictures and other memorabilia, including several framed autographed jerseys from professional athletes with local ties. Saz's runs little buses to Miller Park, leaving about every ten to fifteen minutes. On Tuesday night we took the Ambassador shuttle to Saz's, then after a tasty rib dinner took Saz's bus to the game, and returned to the Ambassador on the hotel bus after the game. Incidentally, we did not get back to the Ambassador until shortly after midnight, and the Envoy was closing up. But, our buddy Chris snuck us in. What a guy!
* I suppose I should write something about the two games we saw, since that was the main reason for our trip. The Twins won both contests, but some of the things that struck me as noteworthy had nothing directly to do with the game action itself. For instance, the first game was a Memorial Day matinee, and the teams wore camouflage caps honoring the military. Before the singing of the National Anthem, the Twins lined up along the third base line, and then the Brewers came out of their dugout and lined up on the first base line. The cool thing was that former Twin Carlos ("Go Go") Gomez walked over to Twins manager Ron Gardenhire and shook his hand before joining his fellow Brewers. That was an unscripted classy move that seemed to take Gardy by surprise. The several thousand Twins fans in Milwaukee that day cheered for Go Go every time he came up. He has always been a fan favorite in the Twin Cities, and he is a better ball player now than he was as a youngster with the Twins. (Going into the series, he was hitting .326.) Coincidentally, in Monday's game Go Go creamed two monstrous home runs, including one that traveled over 450 feet.
The Tuesday game started at 7:10 p.m., lasted fourteen innings, and did not end until 11:53. I've got to give a tip of the cap to Momma Cuan, who hung in there for every pitch. The paid attendance for the game was 24,415, and I would estimate that only around 10,000 were around to see the final inning. Miller Park-- and before that, Milwaukee County Stadium-- is famous for the sausage races which take place before the bottom of the sixth inning. Five humans donning sausage mascot costumes trot around the perimeter of the infield, and the crowd goes nuts. To reward the die-hard fans who did not leave early, a second sausage race was conducted before the bottom of the twelfth inning! I'm not sure what the odds were on the Daily Double, but for the record the winners were Italian Sausage (Guido) and Hot Dog (Frankie Furter). We also did a 14th inning stretch as the organist played "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" for the second time that night.
The extra sausage races and the extra inning "stretch" weren't the only new visual experiences for me on Tuesday night. I saw something else which was out of the ordinary and could only happen in a National League park. Usually when a manager has two pitchers warming up in the bullpen, one is a righty and the other is a southpaw. Sometimes it's because the manager is unsure at what point he's going to need to pull his pitcher, and sometimes it's because he is planning on using both relief pitchers on back-to-back hitters hitting from opposite sides of the plate. The extraordinary phenomenon I witnessed occurred in the bottom of the fourth inning. The Twins were winning 4 to 0 going into the Brewers' bottom half of the inning, but Twins starting pitcher Scott Diamond, who had been brilliant for the first three innings, all of a sudden hit a wall and could not get back his rhythm. He gave up hits to five of the first six hitters he faced in the 4th, and before you could say "Great seats, eh buddy?" the score was 4 to 3 with the tying run on second and only one out. Gardy looked like he needed a stiff drink. Pitching coach Rick Anderson was trying to avoid making eye and audio contact with Gardy. The Twins had two pitchers frantically getting ready in the bullpen, but unlike what would be happening if the game were in an AL park, both guys warming up were right handed pitchers. I figured out why, and shared my observation with MC, whose response was "oh." If your response would be the same if you had the misfortune of having to sit next to me at a baseball game, you should skip the next paragraph.
Here is why the Twins were warming up two right handed pitchers simultaneously in the bullpen. The pitcher (9-hole) was due to lead off the top of the 5th for the Twins. If Gardy replaced Diamond before he could get out of the near-disastrous 4th, the new pitcher would probably be replaced by a pinch hitter in the Twins' half of the 5th, and a second reliever would have to be utilized to pitch in the bottom of the fifth. Thus, the Twins would have burned through an extra pitcher for the sole purpose of relieving Diamond. The next two Brewers batters (Yuniesky Betancourt and Alfredo Figaro) scheduled to face Diamond in the fourth were right handed batters, so Gardy had one righty (Ryan Pressly) ready to be called in to get out of the inning, and a second righty (Casey Fien) to start the 5th after Pressly would be lifted for a pinch hitter. As it turned out, Diamond got out of the inning without further damage by inducing Betancourt to hit into a 5-4-3 double play, but it was clear that Gardy was ready to come out with the hook if Betancourt had reached. In an American League park, where pitchers don't bat, the need to warm up two right-handed (or for that matter, left-handed) pitchers at the same time would not exist.
The Twins' winning run was scored in the top of the 14th inning on a sacrifice fly by pinch hitter Eduardo Escobar. His heroic launch came at about 11:35. Prior to that, he had been sitting in the dugout for almost four and a half hours, waiting for his turn to get into the game.
* I have probably driven the Minneapolis to Madison stretch of Interstate 94 about 300 times. Attending college in Indiana, visiting friends and assorted rellies in Chicago, having a daughter, The Beanschwagel, living in Madison and Milwaukee, and another daughter, JR Sacejewea, living in the Windy City, not to mention baseball games in Sudsville and occasional football games in The Bend and Mad City, necessitated lots of those trips. I have tried many a bar and restaurant (diners, drive-ins & dives, to coin a phrase) along the way. No blog post about a trip to Milwaukee would be complete without at least mentioning my two current (and long-time) favorite spots on the route. The first is the Norske Nook, located in Osseo, Wisconsin, eighty-eight miles southeast of the St. Croix River and therefore easily found off of Exit # 88. The three best reasons to have lunch at Norske's are butterscotch cream pie, banana cream pie and sour cream raisin pie. Sometimes we put in our order for dessert before we order the entree, just to make sure it's sitting there waiting for us when we've finished our hot turkey sandwiches or Swedish meatballs.
Our other go-to place is Monk's Bar in the heart of downtown Wisconsin Dells. The Dells isn't just for getting a piercing or tattoo any more! There is no need to deliberate over Monk's attractive menu. Just order a cheeseburger with mushrooms and fries, and you are set. I originally thought that the tastiness of Spotted Cow on tap, which I typically use to wash down my burger, might be affecting my judgment. But no! On this last visit I went sans suds (diet Coke with a lime, instead), and I still place Monk's burger at the top of my Wisconsin Burger List. And everyone knows, Wisconsin makes the best hamburgers in the country.
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