First Brewers Opener as Minnesota Residents

All photos of 2024 Brewers Home Opener available on Flickr.

As the title of this post suggests, a little thing like moving 400+ miles away wasn't going to stop us from attending another Brewers home opener this week.  The timing and circumstances of the opening game this year just were too good to pass up - it happened to fall during Spring Break a couple days after Easter, and the Crew was playing our new hometown Twins!  It stands to reason that it will never align that perfectly again, so we took advantage of attending another Brewers home opener while we could.  We got into Milwaukee on Friday afternoon and stayed with my parents in Oak Creek and the game itself was on Tuesday afternoon.  Sleeping in my parents house for that length of time again is very surreal, but I'm grateful for these opportunities to visit my family and the city I still and will always love.  And going to AmFam Field in addition to that just put a nice cherry on top of our stay.

The weather was very ominous on Tuesday and it was one of the worst weather forecasts I can recall for an Opening Day - upper 30s temps, a heavy rain that changed to snow during the game, and 30+ mph winds.  These conditions should have made tailgating damn near impossible, but Megan, my brother Nick, and I, along with tens of thousands of other brave fans, sat in our cars with the heat on, pounding Lites and whatever food we could muster sans grill while waiting for the gates to open at 1:10.  The poor weather overshadowed what was probably the biggest change at the ballpark for the offseason - the new parking system.  The Brewers are the first baseball team in the country to implement a new system that does not involve scanning parking passes, but rather works sort of like paying for meter parking.  You are supposed to either activate a pre-paid parking pass on your phone via the MLB Ballpark app and enter your license plate number, or you can also do the same thing by scanning a QR code posted on signs strewn throughout the parking lot.  There are also some kiosk options for those who haven't yet paid on their phones, again sort of like paying at a parking meter station.  As I watched dozens of people grumpily shaking their fists at the QR signs in the cold rain, I knew this change was not going over well and would likely experience some hiccups and pushback.  And in fact, the team did announce during the game that the QR codes experienced "connection issues" and no citations would be issued that day for unpaid parking.  Apparently the Brewers did not realize that 20,000 people all trying to access one website at the same time would be a problem, but I do believe that once that gets rectified, people will find this system incredibly easy, and more importantly it gets you into the parking lot nearly instantly with no stopping or long lines.  I'll say again, for anybody who has used a parking meter in the last decade, this system will come very natural.  Although I like it, I will say that I don't understand what the Brewers motivation is to implement this.  The people that formerly scanned your tickets are now just called "parking ambassadors" and point you where to go so it's not like they're saving money hiring less people, and the only days of the year where there is a logjam getting into the lot is Opening Day and the playoffs.

You know you're getting old when you talk about weather and parking in great detail for an entire paragraph, so I'll move on.  Inside the stadium, there were two major changes for the season.  The first is the enormous new jumbotron.  The new model is over 12,000 SF, which more than doubles the old screen and is the 2nd largest in MLB.  For anybody who's visited AmFam Field, you'll remember that the old scoreboard was flanked with static advertising on 3 sides.  That advertising is now shown on the actual screen most of the time, so even though the screen is huge, the actual footprint is not noticeably larger.  The times you really notice are when full-screen replays or videos are shown.  There is also a second smaller digital scoreboard that was added above the Johnsonville Party Deck in right field that is used primarily to show stats.  It's pretty common for teams to show things like the pitch sequence per at bat or "inside baseball" types of nerdy SABR stats, so this was a welcome addition for an avid fan like myself.  The second major change in the ballpark was the addition of the 3rd Street Market Hall on the loge level in the right field corner.  This area takes its name from the same food hall that exists in the old Grand Avenue Mall downtown and features several grab-and-go style food options provided by popular Milwaukee restaurants - Kompali Taqueria, Anytime Arepas, and Kawa Sushi to name a few.  I was skeptical of how this area would function in a sold-out crowd because it is in a very cramped area where they've already jammed a very popular craft beer bar and craft cocktail bar the last few years.  But given the type of "quick" food and how they've laid it out, it worked surprisingly well.  There are several enclaves of tables in previously dead space, and the food stands face all sorts of directions in an organic fashion to allow for easy queueing.  We shared a sushi roll and an order of crab rangoons from Kawa and both were exceptional restaurant quality.  Kompali and Anytime are two of my favorite eateries in the city as well, so I'll for sure be stopping back to the Market Hall on any future visit.

Our seats were on the club level for the game, which is par for the course with the Nagel family.  We paid our customary respects to the club level bartenders and settled in to our 4th row seats behind home plate to take in an amazing win that brought the Crew up to an undefeated 4-0 at the time (they have since dropped their first game of the season).  Former Giant and 29th round Royals draft pick Jakob Junis got the ball for Milwaukee and tossed an effective 4 innings with 4 Ks.  Elvis Peguero was the bridge man who got the next 2 innings and was dominant, giving up only 1 unearned run en route to earning the win.  Abner Uribe picked up his 3rd save of the season in an uneventful 9th that I mostly remember.  On the offensive side, Brice Turang continued his torrid start to the season with 2 more hits, an RBI, and 2 more steals to add to his league-leading total of 6.  Christian Yelich added his 2nd homer of the season in the 3rd inning as well.  The hallmarks of this young team from last season - speed and defense - look to not only have continued under new manager Pat Murphy, but are even exceeding last year to this point.  The Brewers ran wild on the Mets this past weekend, and it seems like we have half a dozen guys who could be Gold Glove finalists on this team.  This team has a lot of energy and chemistry and it will be exciting to see how the season plays out, particularly the newcomer of 20-year old and #2 overall prospect Jackson Chourio, who became the youngest Brewer to make an Opening Day roster since the venerable Robin Yount.  The question mark of this team will be the starting rotation.  We lost over 500 innings out of the rotation this past season due to trades and injuries and replaced those innings largely with journeymen, and not that much waiting in the wings in AAA.  The first turn through the rotation was solid, but let's see how this holds up over 162 games.

I'm hoping to make it to another Crew game when we come back to Milwaukee in late spring, but otherwise it will be an exciting season of Minnesota baseball and following the Crew on MLB.tv.

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 4/4/24:

(note: I am also tracking the Orioles this year because I have a substantial bet on the over...)

Brewers 4-1, +0.5; 3 v. Mariners, 4 @ Reds

Twins 3-2, -1.5; 3 v. Rays, 3 v. Guardians, 3 v. Dodgers

Orioles 4-2, -1.5; 3 @ Pirates, 3 @ Red Sox

2024 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 0

Peter - 1