Two out of three ain't bad

It's always nice to name a blog entry after a classic Meat Loaf song. What's even nicer is that the "two out of three" is in reference to the Milwaukee Brewers winning two of three in this weekend's interleague series against the Minnesota Twins.

As previously discussed, Tracy and I are big Brewers fans. The Twins, too, have always had a place in my heart (Tracy, on the other hand, leaves no room in her heart for any baseball team besides the Brewers), so we always try to catch at least one of the Brewers-Twins games each season. This season, we got to see the Brewers during their visit to our (relatively) new home state of Minnesota and with our (relatively) new friends from Luther Seminary. We caught two games at the Metrodome, on Friday and Saturday. And can you believe it — those were the two games that the Brewers won.

Joining us at both games was Jake, whom I must thank dearly for helping me out when my computer's hard drives went kaput a couple weeks ago. Jake is the not-so-happy looking fella in the photo to the left, taken Friday night. This is because Jake is a big Twins fan. He started looking like this when longtime Brewer Geoff Jenkins belted a grand-slam home run into the retracted football-season seats beyond right field. This momentous event put to an end our discussion of how Jenkins now looks more like Brett Favre than Brett Favre looks like Brett Favre and also put the kibosh on Jake's fun for the night. The game ended up to be what the headline-writers from my old newspaper would categorize very technically as a "romp" for the Brewers, who won 11-3. What made this game all the more fun (from the perspective of a Brewers fan, anyway) was that our seminary classmate, Sarah, and her husband, Brian, just happened to sit down right behind us. Brian was rooting for the Twins and gave Jake someone to commiserate with. Sarah is a fellow Wisconsinite and was one of the countless other Brewer-backers having a ball in the Metrodome on Friday. We exited the revolving doors that night to the strains of Brewers fans singing "Roll Out the Barrel."

Saturday, we were joined by our Luther buddy, Chris, and his wife, Heather. Chris is from South Milwaukee and of course joined me in backing the Brewers. Heather wore a Twins shirt but isn't a die-hard like Jake, who also brought along two of his other friends to support the Twinkies. Reflecting our friendly diversity in fandom, mascots T.C. the Bear and Bernie Brewer set the bar for sportsmanship while once again teaming up for various sideshows and shameless promotions. But Jake once again turned not-so-happy when the Brew Crew took the lead in the third inning and never looked back (it also probably didn't help that we kept teasing Jake about how much he looks like Twins outfielder Jason Kubel). This game was doubly great for me because it was the first time since Tracy gave me my beloved Derrick Turnbow jersey that Turnbow, the Brewers' fireballing set-up man, pitched a solid inning at a game I attended. After the game, this earned me in my jersey countless high-fives and shouts-out ("Nice game, D-Bow!") from strangers who applauded me for Turnbow's performance.

The Twins squeaked out a win on Sunday, which I was almost happy to see, considering that the Twins fans are such good people and that I was watching that game on TV rather than in person. But this weekend will long stand in my memory as one of the best I've had in the Twin Cities since coming to Luther. (It was also good that I didn't lose my voice from cheering since I had to lead in singing the liturgy from our new hymnal and deliver the children's sermon at my Teaching Parish this morning.)

It's exhilarating to experience camaraderie with random people who wear the same team's apparel, but it's even better to enjoy a night of baseball with some good buddies from the seminary — especially when we can achieve consensus despite our tastes in baseball teams. Saturday night's slow exodus through the dome's revolving doors included a reprise of "Roll Out the Barrel" and chants of "Go, Brewers, Go!" This prompted Jake, a Green Bay Packers football fan, to note that he would join in if only the chant were instead "Go, Pack, Go!" Somehow, with the Wisconsin faithful running out of Brewers chants, "Go, Pack, Go!" indeed soon echoed through the concourse. And sure enough, we joined in together.