Milwaukee: Miller Park

Overview

Milwaukee is one of America's great German cities. It is famous for bratwurst and beer. If you take a 10 minute cab ride to the parking lots around Miller Park most summer evenings, you'll see why.

Miller Park may be the only ballpark in the country where fans talegate every game. And then they head inside to watch a mediocre team. Truly, the talegating is what defined old County Stadium in Milwaukee, and fans have not lost that tradition here.

Through the impressive brick entrance topped by the peaks of the roof sections is an imperfect attempt at a new style of retractable roof parks. It looks heavy, has a few strangely placed posts and there's not enough light when the roof is closed. Still, Miller Park is a fine new park.

Most impressively, the architects realized the flaw in many new parks of too many rows of seats in each deck. Miller solves that problem with five decks. You never have to walk all that far to get to the concession stand. Then again, you have to be sure you know which deck you're in, and how to get there. The infield dirt is very dark brown and the seats are a lighter green than at many new parks. The color combination is unique, if not perfectly pleasing.

The outfield plan is somewhat like the plan of Chase Field in Arizona, except that Milwaukee's design is curved. There are some interesting bleacher sections, and the scoreboard is quite large, if not as informative as Arizona's. The glass panels allow for some light to get in even on days when the roof is closed. For fans in Milwaukee, though, the most unique feature is the Bernie Brewer slide. After home runs, Milwaukee's mascot slides down a big yellow slide into a bucket of beer. It's a design carried over from the old park.

In many ways Miller is imperfect. But in others it is beautiful. Either way, its architects tried some new designs and changed retro a little. Brewer fans, all seven of them, should enjoy games at this park for a long time.