Brewer Baseball

AmFam Field seen from the VA Hospital grounds. 4/28/26 dwm

My son and I went to American Family Field Tuesday for our first, in-person, Brewer game of the season. It was a beautiful spring day.

Road construction on I-94 meant looking for an alternative route to the stadium and we found a nice one.

We approached the park from the south and entered the Clement J. Zablocki Veteran's Administration Medical Center next to the stadium.

I hadn't been close to the historic hospital before but plan to return; parts of the facility date back to the Civil War.

The roof closing before the game. 4/28/26 dwm

The Milwaukee Brewers came into the game with a 14-13 record while the Arizona Diamondbacks were 15 - 12.

Milwaukee had a fast start to the season, winning 8 of the first 10, before losing 11 of the next 17 games, leaving them just a game over .500.

Weeknight games in the spring don't typically draw a big crowd, and Tuesday was no exception with just over 23,000 coming through the gate.

Chad Patrick, starting pitcher. 4/28/26 dwm

It's the second year the Brewers are using facial recognition at the gate. After passing through security, I stopped as the computer looked at me and quickly identified me and that I had two tickets for the game. We were in quickly.

Since we arrived right before the gates opened, we took advantage of the timing by browsing through the Team Store then got seats at a table in the Barrel Yard restaurant over-looking left field.

Our Terrace seats were above home plate with a nice view of the entire field. While there were plenty of seats around the ballpark, our section and the surrounding ones were quite full.

A medical conference on the hill. 4/28/26 dwm

The teams each had uneventful at-bats during the first inning. As the Brewer pitcher, Chad Patrick started his warm-ups for the second, he stepped off the mound and very quickly the catcher was waving at the dugout as the trainer, coaches, infield, and umpire converged on the pitcher's mound.

In the park we had no idea what happened. It was clear that something happened but after a minute or two, Patrick stepped up to throw a couple practice pitches and was pronounced ready to go. I read the next morning in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, that Chad Patrick had about 20-seconds where he couldn't see!

He was able to shake the whole thing off and pitched well into the fifth inning where he ran into trouble after his team had put up 3 runs in the early going. The bases were loaded with one out in the visitors side of the fifth when Patrick was able to limit the damage to two runs, preserving a narrow lead.

Image on scoreboard. 4/28/26 dwm

Major League Baseball launched Automated Ball-Strike this season, which allows the batter or catcher to challenge an umpire's call. Then entire stadium stares at the big screen in center field to see if the ball was in or out of the strike zone.

I missed capturing the first challenge with my camera, but got the second one when Arizona thought it should have been a strike. They lost the challenge. Each team gets two challenges, if they are right, they keep them, if not, they don't. It's been interesting watching from home, it was a mini-event in the stadium.

Hot Dog, Italian, and Chorizo are 1 - 2 - 3. 4/28/26 dwm

Our seats were a perfect perch to watch the Johnsville Sausages race in the middle of the sixth inning.

The Hot Dog's victory may have inspired the Brew Crew as they put 8 runs on the board in the home-half of the sixth inning.

Starting with the last three batters in the line-up, they loaded the bases and the top of the order kept it going, with the first eight batters reaching base and scoring six runs in the process. They went on to score eight runs before the inning finally ended, pushing the lead to 13 - 2.

Contreras and Mitchell score 2 runs. 4/28/26 dwm

The inning was an excellent example of how the Milwaukee Brewers are playing last year and this season; doing whatever they can to get on base; use the team's speed to take the extra base; and take advantage of opponent's mistakes.

This was the first game Milwaukee hit a home run. A solid blast to right field by Sal Frelick, who in the top of the second robbed Arizona of an extra-base hit and kept the D-backs scoreless.

It was a fun game, and nice to see the Brewers get a win. The big margin sent some folks home early which made it much easier than usual getting out of the park; I was home and in bed by 11:30. Go Brewers!