What is the coolest thing you've seen in person at a Brewers game?

[JohnBriggs12]

I saw game 5 of the 82 WS, as well as game 4 of the ALCS that year. I was also there when Lezcano hit the walk off GS on opening day.

 

But the coolest thing was seeing Aaron's 754th career homer. That's right, his 754th, not 755.

 

In all the stuff about greatest Brewer moments the last one he hit is always mentioned, and understandably so, but nobody knew at the time it was his last, and the HR had little significance in the game. But his next to last never gets a mention despite the fact that he points to it in his book "I had a Hammer" as up there among his most memorable.

 

The situation was that the Brewers, mired deep in the standings, were trying to finish off a 4 game sweep of the Rangers and win their 6th straight. It was the 2nd game of a Sunday doubleheader (oh do I miss those!) and quite hot. Most of the crowd stuck around, primarily because Aaron was in the lineup in game 2 and fans then knew they were getting one of their last looks at him. After Aaron made the 2nd out in the bottom of the 8th, it didn't look like he'd get another AB. But the Brewers rallied from 2 down and tied the game in the 9th on a two out hit by 20 year old Robin Yount.

 

That meant Aaron would get at least one more AB. After looking every bit of his 42 years in his earlier AB's, this time he drove one over the left field wall off of Steve Foucault, and the crowd went nuts. We all knew we had just seen something very special and we stayed and cheered until Hank came out of the dugout for a curtain call. I figured he'd hit a few more, but none were likely to be as dramatic and I was so glad I was there. I thought back to when I was just 5 years old and saw my first Braves game in 1958 and a young Aaron hit a HR that night (off Koufax no less) for the only Brave run.

 

In retrospect, since he hit only one after that, I wish that had been his last one. It would have been much more fitting.

[The stache]

Great stuff, everybody! God, I wish I had been at the Easter Game. I watched it on TV if I recall correctly (or maybe it was the radio). I do remember freaking out though.

 

I'll check that other thread out, too. Thanks for the link

[igor67]

A number of mine our Brewerfan related, namely the Prince and Weeks HR in the same game against the Twins

2) Prince's inside the parker at the dome is probably my favorite

3) Eddie Perez's walk-off 3run HR against the Reds

[sauveb]

I don't think this would be the "coolest" thing I ever saw at a game but it has stuck in my memory. I went to a game without tickets at County stadium and as I walked up to the window a lady asked me if I was a big Brewer fan. I said yes and she offered me a ticket. She was part of a group from a nursing home and asked if I would sit in the middle of the group and answer questions. I thought it sounded like fun and said yes. It was mostly just talking baseball and listening to their stories. There was one gentleman who was 3 people to my left and one row in front of me that quit talking once the game started, he was very intent on watching the game. I can still picture him sitting in his seat with his hands on top of his cane and his chin on his hands watching every pitch. In about the 6th inning a foul ball was popped up high into the air toward our section. When it landed it hit on the concrete runway and bounced high into the air. The guy never wavered from his position and when it came back down it hit him squarely on top of the head. He didn't even flinch but rather slowly he toppled over like a little tree falling. The ushers got there right away and the medical people had him on a stretcher and they took him out quickly. The lady who gave me the ticket went out with them and came back a half inning later and said he was okay. In the top of the 9th, here comes the guy back with a bandage on his head. He goes back to his seat, takes the same position leaning on his cane and finishes watching the game. I've often thought of that guy over the last 25 years because he became my definition of a "true gamer".

[The stache]

^^^ That's so cool. I'm glad he was ok.

 

Some people say baseball is boring. I say it's nuanced. . There's a lot going on at any given time, and when I can go to a game, I immerse myself completely in the game, and the ambiance. There's really no place I love being more.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

Living out in LA, I've missed most of the recent big games in person. The family couldn't afford tickets to any big playoff games back in '82. My memories are a little more random.

 

I was at the game Reggie Jackson jumped Mike Caldwell...then Caldwell slammed his bat on the ground.

I remember being at a rain delay game as a kid (I think against the Indians), that was my first exposure to drunk people. As the delay went on people kept running out on to the field and getting chased by the grounds crew. I thought it was pretty cool...my Dad not so much.

Henderson's steals record.

Canseco 40/40

Molitor stealing 3 bases in a row.

Was at several games in the 20/30's of Molitor's streak.

The two games before Easter Sunday.

Caught a foul ball once...it hit in the upper deck and came down. 1st inning from Greg Brock off Jack Morris.

Picture day 1979...the lines were long for Yount, Molitor, etc...but I got my picture taken with Augie...that was awesome.

My first trip to Miller Park was the game the power went out...came back for the makeup with barely anyone there and sat right by homeplate. Have no idea who they played or who won, but odds are it wasn't the Brewers.

 

More than anything I remember the grass...walking into County Stadium and getting that first glimpse through the tunnel of the field. That grass was so green. Still the coolest thing I've seen.

[RWeeksFan23]

What happened on Easter Sunday one year? I've noticed that one in a lot of people's lists.

[jli27]

I didn't like the idea of the Brewers going to the NL, but one thing that I did like was the fact that Sheffield would have to come back to Milwaukee. Solely for heckling purposes, I actually ordered lower box tickets to what I thought would be Sheffield's first game back . I remember sitting in a bar on a Friday night a few weeks before the game and seeing the crawl on the ESPN screen that Florida had traded him to the Dodgers in a deal for Piazza. From what I remember, his glorious return to County Stadium was delayed by quite some time... maybe even into the next season. I was very disappointed.

 

 

haha - same deal here. I had tickets to the first game Florida was supposed to be there, and was similarly disappointed he was traded.

 

I remember later in that first series back, he got tossed for arguing balls and strikes, and the crowd went nuts.

[Funketown]

Could somebody be so kind to give a quick summary of why Sheffield is so hated in Milwaukee? I know he was a tool and accused the club of being racist (wiki), but what are the specifics?

 

 

Briggs - that's really cool. It's pretty neat that we have folks on this board who watched Hank Aaron play.

[PrinceEatMeat]

What happened on Easter Sunday one year? I've noticed that one in a lot of people's lists.

 

One of the most memorable and famous games in Brewers history. This video will sum it up for you. It's one of those games where all Brewer fans remember where they were when it happened.

 

[Nottso]

Could somebody be so kind to give a quick summary of why Sheffield is so hated in Milwaukee? I know he was a tool and accused the club of being racist (wiki), but what are the specifics?

 

 

Briggs - that's really cool. It's pretty neat that we have folks on this board who watched Hank Aaron play.

 

He admitted to tanking plays on purpose in an effort to get traded. Throwing the ball away, etc. He's a bum.

[EdRomero11]

Opening day against the Rangers on ball give a way day. I was running a 102 temp from the flu. I was getting hot chocolate when Matheny hit his grand slam.

 

 

I was at one game where Sosa hit a homer and when Mcgwire hit one and had another taken away.

 

My oldest sons first game, never baseball fan but always a nascar fan, it was race car give away day. He staryed getting cranky and the brewers were losing so we left in the 5th,.The Giants kept that inning going from the time we got in the car until we pulled in our driveway in Racine

[RockCoCougars]

Could somebody be so kind to give a quick summary of why Sheffield is so hated in Milwaukee? I know he was a tool and accused the club of being racist (wiki), but what are the specifics?

 

Mostly he just had a big mouth. Over a period of a few years, he trashed nearly everyone associated with the Brewers including in no particular order: Harry Dalton, the entire pitching staff, Billy Spiers, Paul Molitor, etc. He whined when he was sent down to the minors, when they moved him to third, when Dave Parker was traded, etc. Obviously, the claim that he tanked some throws on purpose didn't help him either. I think a big part of this disdain was that outside of one season, he pretty much sucked as a Brewer, then after the trade, became an instantaneous Triple Crown contender. This certainly indicated that he may not have been, shall we say putting out maximum effort during his stint as a Brewer.

 

With age, I've actually softened on Sheffield over the past several years. The Brewers organization literally got off on the wrong foot with him when their inept medical staff of the late 80's/early 90's failed to diagnose a broken foot his rookie season and let him play on it for several weeks (from what I remember, a chunk of it in the minors). You also have to keep in mind that he was a 20-ish year old kid, completely out of his element. I'm sure that a lot of us had maturity issues and/or said stupid things at that age. Also, he later denied his quote regarding the throwing errors and the box scores don't really bear it out.

[MNBrew]

It'll sound very cliche but, living through all that at the time, this is very much part of it, too: He just plain had a chip on his shoulder and, for whatever reason, always had a glass-is-half-empty view regarding how he was treated by the organization.

 

One thing that surfaced later is that the Brewers never made much of a personal connection with him at all before they drafted him, so there were probably ways he felt he the organization didn't connect with him perhaps the way other organizations did that scouted him. That certainly didn't help build up some of the trust he later so obviously proved he needed.

 

Sheffield complained at one point about a minor league game in which an error that pretty clearly should've gone to Darryl Hamilton was given to him -- according to Gary, it was because Hamilton had some major errorless streak going on. But he took that as a big insult. Funny how it sure took a darn long time for many to truly believe in the quality player that Hamilton would become, while in the meantime every good Brewers fan knew who Gary Sheffield was and couldn't wait for him to earn his way into the majors. It probably was a bit unfair to give Sheff the error, but leave it to Sheffield to take it so extremely negatively and view it as yet another indication that the organization didn't take care of him.

 

It's also possible that he saw how adored & hyped his uncle, Dwight Gooden, was by so many in the media as Gary was coming up through the minors, and because of his potential and bloodlines, perhaps Gary had decided he should be receiving the same kind of treatment from his organization . . . before he'd really ever earned it on the MLB playing field.

 

Over the winter before he was traded, he started talking so badly about many in the organization, even starting to rag on Sal Bando, I believe, the new GM who wasn't really ever in a role where he could've screwed Sheffield previously. . . . But the final straw was when he started trashing Bud Selig in the media -- the one guy who, as owner, stood behind Sheffield and believed in him, no matter what. It was at that point that Sheffield burned his last bridge and Bando had no real choice except to get what he could for him.

[RockCoCougars]

Yeah, he certainly did have a chip on his shoulder. It certainly seemed like Sheffield's primary goal almost from the get go was to get out of Milwaukee. He had the flashy image with the well publicized arrest in the off season of '88, but I remember being stunned picking up the paper one morning after his first outburst. I think the first thing that he went off about was the pitchers not protecting him... I think that he called them 'girls'. He also strongly hinted that he wanted to be traded- probably the quickest trade demand in MLB history. I remember Selig bending over backward to appease him (brought his parents to town, etc.), but in hindsight it seems that the organization handled him the wrong way (though you could assert that Sheffield wore out his welcome almost everywhere that he played...)

 

Sheffield came to the bigs with a ton of hype, I'd say maybe the most hyped Brewer rookie ever. He and Griffey were kind of like the Trout/Harper of '89. Bottom line, if this board would have been around in '89, it would have imploded.

[Dmiles23]

I'll chime in on this subject. I've been to a few of the games mentioned already: The 08 Playoffs, the 11 Playoffs, Fielder's "The Bomb" walk-off, Branyan's homer in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game against the Twins, 5 home run inning, Molitor stealing 3 bases in 1 inning. But a couple memories that just stick out in my head:

 

In 02, I think, we were sitting in the first row behind the Pirates bullpen when Aramis Ramirez charged the mound and threw his helmet at Sheets. Both the bullpens cleared... a couple minutes into the "brawl" one of the Pirates bullpen pitchers came out of the bathroom and had no idea what was going on. That always makes me smile.

 

In 98, my dad and I were able to get tickets in the first row behind home plate from the ticket window. We get to our seats, and end up sitting next to Cal Eldred's dad. It was Cal's first start in the NL, and his dad kept telling us about how excited he was to hit. In his first AB, he gave his dad a "thumb's up" as he walked to the plate.

 

And finally, not really a game, but with all of the Gary Sheffield talk... I was actually staying in the hotel room next to Sheffield when he was traded. He was rooming with Kevin Brown (no, not the good Kevin Brown) and they had a huge party that night. We were wondering what was going on and my parents called the front desk a number of times to complain. We woke up and saw Sheffield was traded on SportsCenter... and a while later, we watched him pack up his car and drive off.

[jli27]

To add to the Sheffield subject.... he never took responsibility for his actions, even after he left. Everything was somebody else's fault, and nothing was ever his fault. The Brewers were racist for starting Bill Spiers at short. The fans were racist for not liking him (because everyone loves a rookie with a sense of entitlement, am I right?). The GM's daughter was spying on him. The scorer didn't like him. His teammates didn't like him. He put forth very little effort to understand anyone - everyone was expected to understand him, and never apologized for his behavior (much of which continued after he left Milwaukee, as he wore out his welcome almost everywhere he went). His me-first attitude may be common 19 year old behavior - but most 19 year olds grow out of it or at least understand they did something wrong. Sheffield never did, and continued to throw his teammates under the bus the rest of his career.

[TooLiveBrew]

Great post on that jli27. Sheffield also said that Joe Torre (& "the organization"... aka NYY) were racist:

 

""I know when I was there, the couple of blacks that were there, every one of them had an issue with the organization. They had an issue with Joe Torre. They weren't treated like everybody else. I got called out in a couple of meetings that I thought were unfair."

 

My read on that little quote? Poor widdle Gary gotted his feewings hurted. Very classic self-obsessed behavior... the guy could dish it out, but he couldn't take it.

[Funketown]

Wow, thanks for the explanation. I knew he was a tool, but that's a whole new level of toolhood.

[hawing]

What happened on Easter Sunday one year? I've noticed that one in a lot of people's lists.

 

One of the most memorable and famous games in Brewers history. This video will sum it up for you. It's one of those games where all Brewer fans remember where they were when it happened.

 

To back PEM up, I know where I was when this happened: on the back porch at my mother's house (home from college because it was Easter weekend), jumping up and down like a goofball. As I've said elsewhere on this forum, I then thought to pop a cassette tape in my brother's Radio Shack stereo, in order to record the highlights from Pat Hughes' 10th inning show. I've got that memorized.

 

Every time I see these video highlights, I chuckle when they show the four young shirtless men in the bleachers. How awesome would it be if those guys could be tracked down and reunited in the bleachers for a game?

[bjkrautk]

I have a few good ones from years past (sitting in the front row for the unscheduled doubleheader against the Astros, the 5 HR inning, watching Hideo Nomo pitch a great game with Big Blue still collapsed on top of Miller Park in the background, watching Ryan Braun homer - and error at 3b - during spring training of his rookie year, any game featuring Molitor Yount & Gantner)...

 

 

...but Game 5 vs. Arizona trumps them all. Never seen the park so electric from the first pitch to the post-game celebrations.

[bani1717]

1. Game 5 of 2011 NLDS

2. Sept 28th, 2008 - the Wild Card clincher vs the Cubs

3. Other playoff wins from 2008 and 2011

4. May 13th, 2006: Derrick Turnbow bobblehead night. Brewers were down 8-4, bottom 8. Corey Koskie hit a 3-run shot, and on the next pitch Damian Miller hit another one to tie it up. That paved the way for Turnbow to come in for the top of the 9th in a tie game on his own bobblehead night... only to lose the game. (bad ending, but incredibly exciting)

5. July 28, 2008: Brewers vs Cubs to break a first-place tie. It was the most electric I had seen Miller Park up to that point (unfortunately we got swept that series...)

6. The play that gave Corey Koskie his career-ending concussion (the play was incredible if I'm remembering it correctly, but obviously the results for Koskie were not). I believe Koskie was drifting back into LF to catch a pop-up. He fell while trying to catch the ball. As he hit the ground, the ball popped up out of his glove to be caught by (Bill Hall?).

7. I remember a game somewhere in the 2006-2007 range when a guy, while holding a child in one arm, reached over the railing at the front of the loge level with his other arm to bare-hand a foul ball.

8. July 30, 2008: Nothing special other than the fact that it was the 17th consecutive home game that I attended.

[Bombers]

1. My favorite memory was the 2008 Wild Card clincher which featured Braun's big shot, CC completing the game, and then the fans sticking around to watch the Marlins beat the Mets.

2. Robin Younts 3,000 hit - But I was only 10.

3. Game 5 of 2011 NLDS - This was an awesome game to be at.

4. I won tickets to the Wolf Pools & Spa's Hot Tub in 2003. The hot tub was where the Tundra Territory is. People would be in the hot tub during a April game. It was pretty funny. Plus good scenery on some games. (Picture of tub http://aquamagazine.com/content/post/Waterfront-July-2003.aspx. ) I also remember being in the extra locker room in Miller Park. It is their visitor's visitor's room. And there were Mr 3,000 scripts all over the place. After we changed into our swim gear we were screwing around reading scenes from the movie. My friend walked all the way around Miller Park in scuba gear (for some reason they had flippers, snorkle, goggles, sitting next to the hot tub.) It was probably the funniest thing I have seen at Miller Park.

5. The Free game per Attanasio. In 2005, Mark gave away 20,000 tickets to the last game of the year. I attended with a bunch of friends and we ended up on the front page of the Journal Sentinel. We were all interviewed and asked to give our impression of this new owner. I remember saying, he gave away 20,000 tickets and actually got people to come to a meaningless game. Got to hand it to him, on a day when you are geared to not make a dime, you make a ton off of parking and concessions. I like him.

6. Braun's walk off in 2011 where he pointed the bat at the stands and Corey Hart has his hands raised over his head as he (and everyone else in the building) knew that ball was gone. Brewers clinch the division. (http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=19566869&topic_id=11493214&c_id=mlb&tcid=vpp_copy_19566869&v=3)

7. Prince hit's roadrunner sign. That was the longest homerun I have ever seen. I don't think that ball has landed yet.

 

Edited for Grammer Issues and to add to #4. The game was pointless but I will never forget being in those "seats"

[pitchleague]

What happened on Easter Sunday one year? I've noticed that one in a lot of people's lists.

 

One of the most memorable and famous games in Brewers history. This video will sum it up for you. It's one of those games where all Brewer fans remember where they were when it happened.

 

To back PEM up, I know where I was when this happened: on the back porch at my mother's house (home from college because it was Easter weekend), jumping up and down like a goofball. As I've said elsewhere on this forum, I then thought to pop a cassette tape in my brother's Radio Shack stereo, in order to record the highlights from Pat Hughes' 10th inning show. I've got that memorized.

 

 

yep, I did the exact same thing. Still have the cassette tape, too. I digitized the recording a couple of years ago.

[Storm]

Opening Day 4/7/1970. It was so cool to have Baseball back in Milwaukee. The crowd was awesome. Krause, Hegan, Walton and Harper will always be some of my favorite Brewers. Too bad they got clobbered.