12 in 12

PREGAME:

Packed up and headed out of Milwaukee around 8:30 CST in a pretty decent rain storm. Stop outside of Madison for gas, coffee, & redbull.  Made another Pitstop at Black River Valley (scenic view pull off) scenic view wasn’t all that scenic until we found the old trail, no longer maintained, that went to the top of the mound. So if you ever stop here follow the dirt path not the bridge.  Full tilt from there to Minneapolis hitting some more rain as we got close to the twin cities. Holiday Inn … Cheaper Parking, One computer business station but it was free, no flat screen, no Versus, but otherwise not bad.  After posting the the Day 1 recap, we grabbed a couple fajitas from Chipolte.  As luck would have it, the hotel is in a five corners area in which each corner had a bar sometimes two.  Add to the mix these bars sponsor a free “Fun Run Party Shuttle” to and from every Twins game. After layering up ( for the extremely cold game to come ) grab a couple colds ones and The Corner Bar… the gave us plastic cup for what we didn’t finish and jumped on the big red bus to Target Field.

GAME:

New stadium equals much bigger crowd.  Our seats were a couple sections right of the first base and just under the over hang.  Target Field is a very nice ballpark.  We had good site lines and the same could be said for the upper decks we walked up to.  They actually put heat lamps behind each lower level section to warm folks up and have several indoor bar areas.  The Jumbotron is huge and obviously hit def, very nice.  The twin cities/ball players sign is sweet as well.  Juan Pierre started of the night with a texas leaguer to left center.  After a fly out by Pierzynski, Jones hit into a double play to end the top of the 1st.  Second up to bat for the Twins Hudson destroyed the back of the batters box (you would think he was a bull getting ready to charge), planting his back foot a well behind where it once was, then promptly popped out. Mauer doubled to left center but the inning is over on a Cuddyer ground out.   Mauer is revered by twins fans they went nuts every time he was up to bat.  The game was cold, very cold felt more like football weather.  As nice as Target Field looks nights like this make people question no roof or at least a retractable one.  White Sox continue to make contact but the Twins fielding prevents them from scoring any runs. In the 4th, Delmon Young (not to be confused with the 2b for the  Pirates, Delwyn Young) 2Bs to the opposite field with Cuddyear and Kubel on base, Cuddyear scored and the 3rd base coach oddly sent Kubel home as well where his was easily tagged for the last out.  In the top of the 5th White Sox start hitting and don’t stop until Slowey gets pulled and they have racked up five runs off of doubles by Alexi Ramiez and A. J. Pierzynski (booed loud every AB, LOUD no love for him) and a single from Andruw Jones. Twins had a chance to stop the bleeding but Hudson was unable to come up with a ground to second base.  Morneau had a single HR to right in the 6th and had a chance to bring it within one run with a blast to dead center but was caught at the warning track by Rios.  Thome came in for some ninth inning heroics with double to right field but his teammates were unable to add to it.

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PRE GAME:

A morning venture to downtown shopping district looking for a Camera store, to get Dave’s sensor cleaned, was fruitless. Funny how when store goes out of business they don’t bother to take down their website or google reference. So, we picked up couple of egg sandwiches and I picked up a circa 1982 Brewers hat at Lids. Then headed to Miller Valley to take the free beer tour (advetisement) of the Miller Brewery Comany. Where we got 3 10 oz samples of Miller Lite, MGD, and a long “L”name micro brewery Sunset Wheat, maybe sunrise but it was damn good anyways. Met 3 guys from Kansas city that gaves the lowdown on where to get some good BQ and cheap beer near our hotel for the KC leg. Found a camera store (Mike Crivelli’s) to get the sensor cleaned which only took 5 min., however waiting for the blonde in front of us to make up her mind took 45 min. After getting slightly lost on the way back to the hotel we wasted an hour watching and agruing about Glenn Beck. Then realize we hadn’t printed our tickets or created our poster yet, two procrastinators on a roadtrip probably isn’t the best team. Huge FAIL, Hilton business center which is leased out to a third party, use of the printer (laptop station) cost .99¢/min
… 1min to hook it up
… 1min to add to printer list,
… 1min to configure
… connecting 1min
… connecting 1min
… connecting 1min
ahhhhh. screw it
WIN Hilton Concierge took care of business center charge and willing to print for free from his station for us if we had a USB drive. Of course mine are all sitting on my desk at work and not in my laptop bag. 50 min to game time we run down to Office Max print the tickets (21¢) and make it to bus stop half hour to game time. 1st bus nope, 2nd bus nope, 5th bus nope, 6th bus success. Arrived at Miller Park 5 min’s to game time. Nice stadium except for the retractable roof looks like a ugly hat when open.

GAME TIME:

With our late arrival it was straight to our seats for the first AB of the game for the Atlanta Braves leadoff hitter Infante. Time for a beer … er carded … really? The first several innings the pitchers were dealing and put a bunch of zeros on the scoreboard. Both Hanson and Davis were cruising through the line up. What no Heyward in the line up … disappointing. Davis has no velocity tonight and was working on guile alone, it finally caught up to him in the 6th inning: solo homer by Glaus. Time for a shower Davis. He left the bases loaded for Para who promtly gave up a two out grand slam to Prado, which deflated the crowd. Game was pretty much over at that point. Bratwurst won the sausage race, disappointed that Randle Simon wasn’t there to hit someone with a bat. Some other highlights include Hanson’s bunt and runner thrown out at third (only notable because we captured the sequence). Two run homer in the 9th, with my rally cap on, by McGehee (pronounced Ma-gee really!?) Prince fielder was on base he is a BIG boy. Also in the 9th the Bat Boy got heckled for throwing all the foul balls to the same guy in his 40s instead of kids … the heckling worked. The only other ninth inning notes were a handful of drunks doing the wave by themselves. Cuisine: Miller Lite, Italian Sausage, Polish sausage, Soft Pretzel, Peanuts.

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After 10 and half hours of driving we are in Milwaukee and ready to start our twelve stadium tour in twelve days.  The trip included a quick stop in South Bend and grueling slog through Chicago.

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