hawing

A concessions note: on Fridays, the concession stand behind section 204 has a semi-secret fish fry (it's not on the posted menu) which is a surprisingly good value compared to many ballpark options.

I have *thoughts* on national anthem performances. I suspect I'm an outlier on them, so I won't share them here. I agree that some performances of the Star Spangled Banner are cringe inducing.

25 and under? Wouldn't that include a majority of people not old enough to even start college?

We used to hit up the tundra territory once a year or so, just for a different POV. I think it's now reserved for groups. Womp womp. Somewhere in the MLB dot com archives is FSWI footage of a first inning home run hit to just below our seats in the Territory. If you know where to look, you can briefly see us cheering.

Usher Bill IS the best. He at least used to read this site too! *waving*

I'll admit that the hawing household has scaled back how much ballpark food we eat, mostly because my partner is diabetic and a lot of ballpark staples are not diabetic friendly. We have also continued to mask at games, so we are more likely to stop for Cousins subs or the like en route to the park. Having said that, when I do eat at AFF, I enjoy the baked potatoes, the big warm pretzels (greatly improved since they switched to Milwaukee Pretzel Co products) and (betraying my Madisonness) Ian's Pizza. There's a grilled cheese stand by the hot corner team store which I've also enjoyed, but it was frequently closed during our games in 2022. For beverages, I bring in water or a soft drink and Tom gets a designated-driver voucher. We're rarely in the club seats, but when we have that access, we've had success with the taco bar. You choose your fillings and can ask for enough lettuce to basically have a taco salad instead of a taco. For seating (besides first-base side to stay mostly shaded, because I have two skin settings - pasty and crispy), I love love love our seats in the central loge, below the press box. We've become acquainted with several of the press box regulars and some of the announcers, and I like being able to hear the press box announcements. We also have a 20 pack in the terrace box, and I think it's a best kept secret in terms of the view you get for the price. The key is to land in the sections closer to home plate. Having said that, most of our terrace games are weeknights, which tend to not be super rowdy. Terrace boxes are small enough for guest relations staff to actually be able to keep an eye on things and nip unruliness in the bud. The terrace reserved sections are so much larger that there's no way an usher can see everything. Both our loge and terrace seats are in the family sections. We originally got family section seats when they were designated at County Stadium, because it was the only place in the seating bowl where you couldn't smoke - but we got to appreciating the relative lack of rowdiness/fighting/puking. In both of our family sections, the ushers are attentive, which we also appreciate.

Vinny seems like a no-brainer for a fantasy camp coach type of role.

owbc, if you get there and Vinny Rottino is still on the coaching staff, tell him you know me. Vinny'll take care of you. 😀

Nope, Freddy is Mr. April this year!

Hey, I'll start. For the umpteenth consecutive year, I have a Brewers wall calendar - the kind for which the players to spotlight are chosen months in advance of the actual year, which means there's always someone on the new year's calendar who is already off the roster. The 2023 calendar starts off with Kolten Wong for January, Hunter Renfroe for February and Josh Hader for March. ?

Random, pointless, dumb, or any combination thereof!

The year may be new, but the potential for life to bug us is timeless - so have at it!

On December 13 (today as I write this), Dick Van Dyke is now 97 years old.

It's December 12 as I write this, and Bob Barker is now 99 years old.

We've had a Prius since 2007 and have a Prius Prime on order. The length of our ballpark trips (78 miles each way from home to the Molitor Lot!) was why we weren't sure about range - plus we're a one-vehicle household. I rarely look forward to the MLB offseason, but if the car arrives by then, we should go quite a while between gas station visits.

Haha, we used to refer to Bruce Ruffin as "Rough'em Up" Ruffin. ?

I'll admit, after literally two days of my first post-college job, I realized upon leaving that there was nothing I *had* to do at home. I adjusted pretty fast to not having to wonder what course readings or homework I was behind on. Of course, that night I spent time unpacking since I had just moved to Green Bay.

In the first year of my post-college library career, I was fresh out of grad school, so the eldest of my student employees were just two years younger than I. I walked into the office once and two of them were talking and said, "She's back, let's ask her. Once you're out of college, does the stress go away?" Readers, I laughed. Then I told them that some stress does go away, but it's promptly replaced by other stresses.

OR ELSE...it's on-brand for Betty to have had the last laugh, passing just as People magazine's cover story touting her 100th birthday came out. Allen Ludden, her husband, was a Wisconsin native and is buried in Mineral Point, a small town southwest of Madison. Can you imagine if Betty gets laid to rest with Allen? I don't know that the chances are great, but they are not yet zero.

Dean Stockwell (most recently remembered as Al on Quantum Leap). https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1053851755/blue-velvet-and-quantum-leap-actor-dean-stockwell-has-died-at-age-85

Frank Bonner - perhaps best known as sales dude Herb Tarlek on WKRP in Cincinnati - has died: https://nypost.com/2021/06/17/frank-bonner-star-of-wkrp-in-cincinnati-dead-at-79/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=P6Twitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow He's the second core cast member lost from that show after the Big Guy, Mr. Carlson (Gordon Jump).

Also Murray Slaughter from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

The hawing household also favors the salad bar at Rocky's - though of course we haven't been in at least a year, and I can't imagine they're doing salad bars nowadays. The Madison location closest to Camp Randall has/had a honey mustard dressing that was excellent.

Here's hoping he's found peace, but I have a heck of a time classifying Screech as a TV treasure in my mind.

Absolutely! Pizza Hut in Monroe in the 1980s was The Bomb and The Place To Be after every high school event. Once I moved to Madison, I found non-chain pizzas and have for the most part never looked back.