Visitors

Summer afternoons and baseball seem to go together. I went to my first Cubs game when I was ten. Going with my Uncle George to the friendly confines of Wrigley Field was an initiation experience as surely as my first pair of nylon stockings or my first kiss. I got to learn how to fill out a score card and how to find my seat from the ticket stub. I remember watching in amazement at how slight, but deceptively muscular, old men carried cases of beer (or Pepsi or insulated metal boxes of hot dogs) up and down long sets of stairs. Equipped with a miniature wooden paddle (think cross between popsicle stick and tongue depressor), it seemed like it took hours to eat my first Frosty Malt. I simply relished each spoonful. There was so much to take in; the white numbers that marked the distance from home plate shining through swatches of ivy along the red brick outfield walls, how a man in the scoreboard would put new numbers up --by hand, no less -- at the end of every inning, updating the crowd on hits and runs and pitching changes.

A lifelong Cubs fan, I finally made it to Comiskey Park on the south side the season before they tore it down. I have gone to a select few Sox games since. (Who could resist Elvis Impersonator Night when Vegas-era Elvis lookalikes parachute onto the field and the stands are filled with father and son duos sporting fake sideburns?) But for most of my life, I have been pretty much a one-ballpark woman. To me, the idea of going to a baseball game meant going to Wrigley Field.

I was very excited to have the chance to see the Cubs play the Brewers at Miller Park in Milwaukee. This was going to be one of the highlights of my Wisconsin excursion with John. I had never gone to a stadium in another team’s town before. I had never gone to a ballpark to root for the visitors.

Certainly, there are many great rivalries in baseball. When the St. Louis Cardinals come to Chicago to play the Cubs, I smile at all the red-shirted fans that come up for the weekend to cheer them on. They’ll spill out of already crowded subway cars as they travel from downtown hotels to Wrigleyville then, after the ninth inning, roam the streets looking for the best place to get Chicago style deep dish pizza.

But I think the Cubs-Brewers meetings are sort of special. Their face-offs don't have an especially long history, but the two teams’ home fields are only 83 miles apart.

Oh, and there was so much to take in at Miller Park. Once we parked the car, we decided to walk to the main gate and check out the statues of Robin Yount and Hank Aaron, two of the town’s greatest. John took a picture of me with Brett Wurst, one of the five sausage mascots that race before the seventh inning at all Brewers’ home games. Brats were getting coated with mustard. Kids were swinging away in arcade batting cages along the perimeter of the stadium. The park’s retractable roof was open. It was a sunny, seventy-five degree day and the beer was flowing. You guessed it. Miller Beer.

We had great seats in what they called the loge section, between the first and second tiers, along the third base line. I studied the scorecard for a while, wanting to get familiar with the players, although I wasn't really committed to recording the results of each at bat throughout the game. I looked at the stands around me. Sure enough, I was in a sea of navy and gold jerseys sporting Ryan Braun’s and Prince Fielder’s numbers. But it was not difficult to spot Cub fans either. They, too, were wearing their colors proudly. There were lots of red and blue Cub logo topped caps in the crowd, and Chicago fans that sported the bright white, lightly pin-striped, uniform shirt -- they sort of glowed.

What a great feeling it is to be somewhere and be able to spot your people so easily. It is easy to recognize your brothers and sisters as a visitor in a foreign ballpark. And when I saw my fellow Cub fans, I recognized that we all remembered the Bartman ball incident that derailed the Cubs championship campaign in 2003. We had all contemplated the Billy Goat curse. We all had a favorite Jack Brickhouse or Harry Caray homerun call, and we all missed Ron Santo.

I really enjoyed taking in everything I saw at Miller Park. As a visitor, everything was new to me; in the park and on the field. I noticed the different traffic patterns around the restrooms and saw some novel souvenirs displayed in the gift shops. In the stands, I made sure I located all the electronic signs that featured the ball and strike count. I practically stared through the 6000 square foot, 10 million dollar scoreboard, the third largest in baseball. It seemed like a good focal point for infinite amusement. In mega mega watt illuminating power, it flashed images of the current batter along with his stats or showed replays of arguably close calls.

And then I thought about the great old green scoreboard back at Wrigley, how fascinated I was with it in 1967, at my first game, how knowing there was a man walking through its guts changing the game stats by hand, felt like magic in it own way.

Being a “visitor” anywhere and being conscious of how the experience can make you feel like you’re ten years old again, when you saw or did something for the very first-time, is no small thing.

On the Ground

“What do you want to do for dinner?” John asked me from our hotel room in Glendale, a few miles from downtown Milwaukee.

He had his laptop open and he was scanning through sites like Urban Spoon.

“If you have a hankering for something, let’s go for it,” I posed. “Or, let’s go somewhere downtown or along the river. I think there’s been a lot of development along the river. Should be able to find something we’d like.”

John took note of several screen maps that showed high concentrations of eateries before putting his travel PC to sleep. He had a general idea of where the Third Ward was and another neighborhood close to the famous Allen Bradley clock tower that seemed worth checking out.

As we walked towards the car, I said, “Do we have to get back on the highway? Can’t we just take streets and boulevards? I like to see a city at ground level, not from a concrete clover leaf.”

He smiled. I think I discovered his preferred way to explore a new environment.

We drove down Port Washington, which turned into Martin Luther King, which turned into something else before we turned on Water Street and started scoping out the gallery district. We watched the landscape change from working class to seriously gritty to artsy to business back to young and funky again. We actually saw where people lived and met friends for drinks. We learned the name of the local convenience store chain.

“What do think of that place?” John pointed to a bar-restaurant with a crowded beer garden.

“I’m making a mental note of it,” I said. “We can come back to it later. Let’s keep going.”

We drove a little further then, when the neighborhood started getting too Old Milwaukee industrial, decided to turn around.

“Let’s just park the car and walk around,” John suggested.

I needed no convincing. We were in what the guide books referred to as the Historic Third Ward, which was overflowing with galleries, bars and eateries. We found a place to park (for free, no less) and started roaming the streets, looking into the windows of the restaurants we passed trying to get a feel for their crowd and cuisine, occasionally looking at the street numbers etched into the brick face of buildings we passed so we could find our way back to the car later.

“What about that place?” John pointed to what seemed to be a small storefront restaurant. It had a chichi, minimalist look, and I was nervous about spending a lot of money.

I decided to go in and ask to see a menu anyway. It was a beautiful, dark dining room, spare on decorations but somehow feeling very warm and welcoming. The dinner menu was pricey, but the hostess was quick to point out that they had a bar in the back where they served incredible appetizers. The restaurant was called Hinterland. Per my online dictionary, hinterland is “the remote or less developed parts of a country; back country.” It was the perfect name. We didn’t exactly travel the back roads to get there, but we could only have noticed the place by looking around at ground level.

We wandered to the back room where they had a projection TV playing the Cubs-Brewers game and floor to ceiling wooden racks filled with a great assortment of wines. The menu featured such unusual items as fish collar (we soon learned the most flavorful part of the fish) and beet salad with premium blue cheese. They billed themselves a gastropub. They fulfilled both parts of their name with very creative menu items any gastronome would plotz over and a great variety of their own micro brewed beers. At only $5 a flight, we couldn’t resist.

We made friends with the waiter cum bartender, Russ, who was more than professional while thoroughly chatting the patrons up. He introduced us to the chef and owner who, apparently, had won awards for his stellar kitchen skills.

Driving back to our hotel, happily satiated, we felt like we had just discovered a great secret; a place only locals and heavy duty foodies knew about. We probably would never have made the discovery if we were relying on a recommendation from our hotel clerk, or if we were in a hurry to get somewhere, or if we had to plan in advance where we were going. We would never have discovered Hinterland if we weren’t ready to commit to roving around – on the ground.

Discovering a wonderful restaurant by simply wandering the streets is no small thing.