The Cheap Seats

I recently was in Wisconsin on business, arriving in Milwaukee mid-afternoon, The Brewers were in town and the colleague I was traveling with had not been to Miller Park there, so we decided to see the game that night. Neither he nor I are big Brewers fans but it was a perfect evening for baseball and so we decided that would be a fun way to have dinner, grazing at the ballpark instead of going to a restaurant. Also, we are both engineers and find the stadium with it's retractable roof interesting enough all by itself.

Arriving early at the stadium,  I asked at the ticket window what the cheapest seats might be. The agent started with the $30 seats but we quickly got down to the $15 level. I was still hesitating, as was my colleague. We were clearly out-of-towners so I don't know that he wanted to offer it up, but he finally allowed that there were a few other tickets available: the Bob Uecker Obstructed View seats. Those were priced at one dollar. These are limited in number in just one section of the park and only available at the door, they cannot be reserved in advance.

One dollar! Now that was more like what we had in mind! The name alone made me want them! Bob Uecker is something of a tradition in Milwaukee as he has done the radio play-by-play for the Brewers for many years and also played there briefly in his brief major league career. These seats are reminiscent of his seat up in the 'nose bleed' section in one beer commercial he did a number of years ago as they are in the top section of the stadium underneath the mechanism that opens and closes the roof. There are 2 large steel beams that hold up that mechanism, so this is the only small area of the stadium where a few seats have an obstructed view. They are right behind home plate, so they still are not such bad seats.

But since we were early we decided to sit down in the Terrace level during batting practice and we could leave if folks showed up with tickets for those seats. No one showed up, so we got some good seats for a dollar! Unfortunately, right behind us some folks showed up in about the second inning who were obnoxious, and one woman in particular was a combination of loud-mouthed, rude, and somewhat obscene all in one. Since she was at least 50 years old, I expected at least slightly more maturity. No such luck.

Since we had gone to game on a lark, and had finished grazing on brats and nachos, after 5 innings we had our fill of obnoxious ballpark fans. We had a 2 hour drive still ahead of us, too, so we left. I was reminded, though, of many things I have come to dislike about professional sports. In this case we avoided the ridiculous cost of tickets nowadays for a ballgame, but were unable to avoid the seemingly ever-present obnoxious drunken fans. When that is added onto the steroid-inflated players and the greed of both the players and owners I find myself less and less interested in professional sports as time goes on.  I enjoyed looking around this interestingly constructed stadium, the perfect summer evening weather that night, and even the junk food. But overall my feeling that the game has lost its way was reconfirmed.  So I will continue to be one who only very rarely visits a ballpark, even in the cheap seats.