Notes from Miller Park 4/18

I made my first trip to my Mecca last night to watch the Pirates take on Brewers. What a terrible April day. Makes me thank the heavens that the good people of Milwaukee are paying higher taxes for a dome ballpark. Rain and 40-degree weather are just no fun to sit in.
The guy I went to the game with used to be an usher at Miller Park for about three years. In his tenure he got to be friends with all of the other ushers - who if you don't know are like sacred gatekeepers at ball parks. Well, let's just say section 4-something turned into 119, 20-or-so rows away from the field. It's not who you know, its who knows you. Not too bad for $4 tix.
Now that I've set the stage let's get to some quick first-hand notes and observations.
Bruce Froemming, a Milwaukee Native was noted prior to the first pitch as being the longest tenured umpire in MLB history, currently in his 37th year.
A great quote about and from Bruce: "Bruce Froemming was an absolute terror at first - a cross between Napoleon and Hitler...especially if it's a day game after a midsummer's night contest and he has to umpire behind the plate." - Larry Dierker
"The sun is 93 million miles away, and I can see that." - Froemming, when asked about his eyesight.
I love baseball quotes.
On to the game. Nice to see the crew get some early run support to Vargas who was dealing. Let me tell you, Vargas does not mess around. He throws strikes, gets the ball back standing six inches behind the rubber, steps on, gets his sign and is ready to throw again. Very un-Sheets like.
The all-righty line-up by Ned (Miller at first base? Really? Are you sure? You want to think about that one more time? Really? No, really. Really?) seemed to work out pretty well as the brewers touched up Maholm early getting three in the first. And Billy should should do some sort of free advertising for Mercedes as he needed every inch that party deck was brought in to hit is home run.
Speaking of Hall, mark this day as he hit the midpoint of when his athleticism was equally as positive as it was detrimental. Let's not even talk about the bobble in center after two throwing errors by Vargas. Well it should have been one, Miller at first base? Really? Fielder wouldn't have caught that? Really? Fielder did stick it in Yost's pipe to smoke when he got a pinch-hit single against a lefty.
Fast-forward to the Sausage race. Any coincidence that the first game I attend the Hot Dog wins the race? Then manages to high-step, give a pseudo-Heisman pose and flex at the other sausages as they hobbled across the finish line.
I have to honestly say from about the sixth through the eight inning I only had one eye on game as the other eye was watching the scoreboards in left field post 0 hits next to the Texas line. Through the eight you could feel the excitement build and then when it finally posted an "F" and Texas still couldn't manage a hit, it was pretty exciting to be at a ball park the same time a no-hitter went down.
For all of you who want to know how did Bay's hit look in person, let's just say he cleared the Liene's canoe in right-center. That was a bomb.
The ball under the hat game needs to go or get harder, I don't care about the kids. I've never lost at that game, no matter how sober or wasted I've been. Not once, it's not even hard.
Needless to say it was a good night for the Brewers last night. There were more topics I wanted to get to, but this is getting pretty long, so I'll stop it here and maybe make another post later with more thoughts from the game.