PSC columnist Dan Olson made it to the Rockies' Season Opener at Milwaukee's Miller Park & their Home Opener at Coors Field. So who won the Battle of the Beer-Named Ballparks?
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Hallelujah! Baseball Season has begun once again. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year (I don’t care what Christmas thinks).
To celebrate the return of our national pastime, I gave myself a little treat this year. I flew out to Milwaukee for Opening Day 2010 to watch the Rockies open up (in my opinion) their most promising season ever.
Initially I was going to write a recap of the game as seen live from the stands of Miller Park, but the differences in Opening Day celebration styles between Milwaukee & Denver were so interesting (and since the average Rockies fan wasn’t able to go to Opening Day in Milwaukee themselves), I decided to compare the two instead.
Luckily, I made it back just in time to attend Opening day at Coors Field too. In Denver, the Rockies opened up against the visiting San Diego Padres.
So, without further ado, I give you Opening Day Comparisons between Miller Park and Coors Field…
The first striking difference that must be understood is the locations of the ball parks.
Coors Field, as any good Rockies fan would know, is right downtown, planted amidst working business and residential lofts. Â Miller Park, on the other hand, is removed from the heart of the city and placed in a more isolated area.
This affects much of the difference in the pregame traditions of the two fan bases. For instance, there is very little parking directly adjacent to Coors Field, so people will park many blocks away and walk in. The Miller Park parking facilities on the other hand are massive and nearly encircle the ballpark. Such vast parking lots so close lead to a great sports tradition: Tailgating.
The tailgating at Miller Park was not unlike a tailgate at Invesco Field @ Mile High Stadium, except that at Invesco people will trickle in all day so the lots gradually fill up. At Miller Park everyone arrived at the same time causing long lines of traffic. Once we were able to get in to the parking area however, it was remarkably efficient. Cars were parked in the thousands within one hour and after parking there was a short period of hurried setup and jockeying for grill and game space. But after 15-30 minutes of setup, people would know lock in and the tailgate would continue smoothly. Conversely, at Mile High Stadium, the early arrivals grab large spaces that contract slowly as time passed and people arrived.
Invesco is useful to convey the differences in tailgating styles between Denver & Milwaukee (whose NFL fan base is split between Green Bay & Chicago), but the pre-baseball tradition between the cities couldn’t be more different.
At Rockies games we don’t tailgate, we barhop.
It’s up to you whether you prefer pregame tailgating or barhopping; they both have their pros and cons.
With barhopping you will be faced with lines to get into the best bars, and end up in close quarters once you get in.  With tailgating you can spread out a bit.  But barhoppers don’t have to clean up after themselves and sometimes get live music as a bonus.  For my money, live music beats the meshing of four idiots blaring competing car stereos any day.
(The big thing Miller Park’s parking lot got wrong was the restroom facilities. Our section had to have between 300-400 cars each with 3-5 people and there were 3 port-o-potties. It was terrible.)
The pregame at both ballparks was fantastic.
I commend both teams this year for exceptional fan unity.
At Miller Park I saw exactly 9 Colorado Rockies fans (myself include) in a full day of walking around. I was more or less alone in a sea of blue pinstripes. But four days later I didn’t see a single San Diego Padres fan (not that I was looking) in or around Coors Field. Mad props to both teams’ fans.
When it comes time for the game, if you are outside Coors Field you all leave your respective bar simultaneously.  This results in long lines at the gate.  At Miller Park you get a nice mile to a mile and a half walk to the entrance, which produced surprisingly short lines at the gate to get in. Once you are in, moving around in both parks is very easy. Thank God we have finally arrived at an age in mankind’s troubled history where we consistently design ballparks to handle human traffic efficiently.
Aesthetically speaking, both parks are beautiful.
That said, the edge has got to go to Coors Field for two reasons: the setting right next to the mountains, and the wide open roof.
Technically the top was open for each game, but the Miller Park roof slides along a conveyor track on top of a wall around the park. The wall has large windows in it to let the wind blow through, but even with those it’s difficult to see anything but sky. Also, there are no centerfield seats, just a giant scoreboard behind the center field wall. That just seem like a waste to me.
The playing field at Miller was similar to all major league fields except that the outfield is jagged. I have never liked ballparks that have a bunch of weird angles along the outfield wall. I suppose it gets very exciting when the home team hits a long fly to certain parts of the park, but it just isn’t my style.
When the Milwaukee opener began I got my biggest surprise.
The nice people at Miller Park play music every time a player comes to bat regardless of the team. I thought that was very classy of them. I cannot continue to endorse Coors Field’s policy of dead air during visiting teams’ at bats. Miller’s approach is better for the fans, and that’s better for the game.
The one area Miller Park absolutely has Coors Field beat is the between-inning entertainment.
They play the same game that Coors does, where a cutie from the Park Staff will find a fan, put them on the jumbotron, and ask them trivia for prizes.  But at Miller Park when the fan gets it wrong, they are mocked by the overhead announcer and booed by the crowd. It was awesome. And you simply can’t go wrong with 5 people dressed up in top-heavy sausage costumes racing from 3rd base to 1st. Very funny.
The fans at both parks were active in the game, but at different levels.
The Brewers fan were louder than the Rockies fans, but the Rockies fans cheered at times that made sense while the Brewer fans sometimes seemed to be cheering for no reason.
Also, the Brewers fans were definitely drunker per capita. I can’t be too mean, though, as I expected to receive at least a bit of trouble from a random drunkard at some point, but not one person was rude to me because of my Rockies jersey. Not one person was rude to me period.
Brewers fan are a classy group.
The trip out of the Miller Park was a stark difference to leaving Coors Field.
When leaving the Rockies’ house, you always have to contend with a good degree of congestion around the exits. Miller Park had zero congestion. It was amazing.  The crowds move fluidly and efficiently. Whatever they’re doing right, we need to figure it out. A home loss for the Rockies always leads to bad situations around the stadium’s corner exits as malcontent drunks get smushed together.
Also, I have to relay this story.
At Miller Park, it took us twenty minutes or so to walk from our seats to the car.
When we left our seats, the roof of the ballpark was open.  When we arrived at the car, the roof was closed and I hadn’t heard a sound. 12,000 tons of steel moved 600 feet and you couldn’t hear a thing. My friends in Milwaukee said there have been times when a game has been engrossing and you’ll look up and find the roof open or shut in the middle of a game without having heard it move. That’s some pretty awesome baseball-related engineering.
The post-game at both parks is similar to the pregame, although Miller Park is much drunker after the game. Although, it may be that the tailgating atmosphere in Milwaukee displays its drunken idiots in plain sight, while the drunken idiots might be attending a different bar in the Denver scene. There will unavoidably by a giant mess left behind by the tailgaters that probably is left behind by the bar hoppers too, it’s just that the bars clean up quickly and in stages.
All in all it’s a good time both ways.
The battle of the beer-named ballparks is too close to call, but baseball fans attending either Opening Day in Denver or Milwaukee should count themselves lucky. Both cities support first class baseball environments.  I highly recommend making your way to Coors Field or Miller Park for Opening Day 2011, as both ball clubs look to be competitive for some time.
Oh, speaking of competition, there’s one more big difference I forgot to mention. The Rockies won their Home Opener. Sorry Brew Crew.
