The summer of 2002, the Milwaukee Brewers drafted Prince Fielder, son of famous Tigers slugger Cecil Fielder. Josh was thrilled. Even more exciting was that after a short stint in Rookie ball, he was moved to Low-A ball: he'd be playing in the Midwest League at Beloit and would be visiting Kane County regularly.
Over the next year, we went to a lot of baseball games. We'd sit sit on the third base line right behind the visitors' dugout, and on several occasions got up close and personal with Fielder. We made a couple of road trips to Beloit, and even caught the Snappers in South Bend.
Along the way, we came to know a couple of other promising prospects, Rickie Weeks and Tony Gwynn Jr. Tony's career hasn't taken off, but Prince and Rickie have both been invited to the Big Dance.
And yesterday, they both hit their first Big League home runs.
Amazingly, Josh and I were at the game. Josh's Dad had invited us to Miller Park long before Prince had been called up. Even when they brought Prince up to DH in a string of interleague games we didn't get too excited, because we figured they'd send him back down when the string was over.
They didn't.
Then we learned that Johan Santana was up in the Twins' rotation. The Brewers don't like to hit Prince against lefties, and Johan almost never succumbs to middle relief, so it didn't look good for seeing Price bat.
We left for the game at 3:00 last night, giving ourselves plenty of time to get to the stadium in Milwaukee, less than two hours away by Mapquest, for the 6:00 open. An hour and 15 minutes later, we were less than three miles from our house. The expressway was (unexpectedly) cut down from three lanes to one for road construction. Of course, had we known, we could have taken an alternate route, but we didn't know. It took us 1.5 hours to get from the on ramp near our house to the next off ramp.
Once we got off the expressway and took a back road, we made good time to Milwaukee, but once we got there, we were sent on a detour where traffic was all backed up because all the Miller Park parking was full, and all the Twin fans that were there didn't know where to go.
By this time, the game has started. Luckily, we have WTMJ, the Milwaukee sports broadcaster, programmed into my car radio (the LED display on this radio is broken, so unless you hear them say the frequency, you have no idea where you are on the dial). Shannon Stewart led off the game with a home run, and the Twins scored two more in the top of the first.
Then the Brewers came up. Rickie's batting #2, and he led off his game with a dinger. My heart swelled up with pride--as if I was his mother. Of course, it was disappointing that we had tickets to the game, could see the stadium, but were still in the car.
We ended up parking about a mile from the park and hiking, finally getting to our seats sometime in the fourth inning. Johan was off. In his next at bat, Rickie hit a triple off him. He ended up throwing 97 pitches in 5 innings--with 4 walks and only 7 strikeouts.
Johan got himself into trouble in the sixth, so Gardenhire brought in Jesse Crain. Right-handed middle relief.
At this point, Josh has gone in search of a veggie dog, and I'm chatting with his dad. I glance toward the field and see a player climbing out of the dugout. "That's Prince!" I can't help yelling. A second later, his bat is announced, and the crowd goes wild.
Prince is a patient batter, but he didn't have to wait long for a choice pitch. He nailed the first pitch from Jesse, sending it flying 426 feet opposite field.
The crowd was, of course, going nuts, but after supporting Prince for years before he got to the majors, I couldn't help but feel like a proud mom. Even now, I get a little verklempt thinking about it.
And poor Josh, on the concourse searching for a veggie dog, only got to see it on the CC TV.
