Well, they were playing the Brewers, and somebody had to win. For most of the summer, I follow baseball for about five minutes a day, but I like to attend at least one game every year. Last night, I took two of my children to see the Brewers and the Cubs at Miller Park.

When I was in law school, my wife and I could hear the fireworks at the old Comisky Park, but when we wanted to see a game, we drove to Wrigley. That was the era of Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, Greg Maddux, Mark Grace, etc. The Cubs won our hearts, and we have kept one eye on them ever since.

The Brewers arrived in Wisconsin in 1970, not long after my family relocated here. But I grew up loving the Twins with Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Bert Blyleven, Rod Carew, Jim Kaat, etc. Minneapolis was closer to my home than Milwaukee, and we occasionally attended a game at the old Metropolitan Stadium. The Twins continue to amaze me this summer, leading their division over teams (notably, those dreaded White Sox) with much higher payrolls.

Anyway, I started following the Brewers in 1981 because they were good (yes, I am a fair-weather fan) and because I spent that summer working in the pro shop of the Eau Claire Golf & Country Club. As we waited for the last golfers of the day to exit the course, we listened to Bob Uecker call the Brewers games. Those were the exciting days of Bambi's Bombers, and we loved Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Rollie Fingers, etc.

So last night seemed to be the perfect game. Two teams that I would be very pleased to watch. Greg Maddux v. Ben Sheets. Nice. So I thought.

My troubles began before we even left Madison. At Sears. Because of the delay, we didn't arrive at the stadium until the second inning, and I could see immediately that something was wrong. The Brewers average 24,187 people per game, well below the capacity of 42,400. Moreover, the Brewers are in last place in their division. Surely we could just walk up and buy a ticket, right? I hadn't counted on Cubs fans filling the seats. Doh! The Cubs are in a wild-card race, and the game was sold out.

After parking what seemed like miles from the park, we scalped some tickets from a guy riding a bicycle through the late arriving fans. If I had been in the mood to bargain, I could have gotten a discount, but I paid him $7 per tickets having a face value of $6. He tried to tell me that the tickets were really $12 tickets. Whatever.

As we approached the park, we heard cheering and we could see dancing Cubs fans. We missed the top of the third inning and two home runs. Crud! We finally reached our seats for the top of the fourth. Our seats were bad. Left field, way up. Not only that, but we were behind some railings, which obstructed our views of the pitcher and batter. And people kept walking in front of what was left of our view to get to the exit. Several times, lazy vendors rested by the railings and shouted, "Anyone want some Craker Jacks?" No one seemed to care, except me, so I asked them to move, which they did ... slowly.

The worst part of the night was the bathroom break. My son and I were standing at the urinals doing our business when suddenly both of us jolted and yelled, "What was that!" I had felt a spray of warm water on my leg. IT WASN'T WATER! Two stalls away from me -- the one next to my son -- a drunken Cubs fan was having a hard time finding the wall. Gross! Gross! Gross! We were so shocked and disgusted that the fellow made an escape before we could figure out what to do. That was as close as I have ever come to committing a battery.

And, yet, despite all of this, we left the game happy. We had seen the sausage race. We had eaten cotton candy. We had watched Bernie Brewer slide after a home run by Russell Branyan. We had sung "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" in the seventh inning stretch. And we had laughed as the bubble cam scanned the crowd. My children are great fun.

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