A slimy stream of orange vomit slides slowly down a staircase. Slurred four-letter words fight out of drunken mouths and hang in the air among indecipherable shouts and groans. An inebriated man in handcuffs yells something about bovine manure as policemen drag his bulky, bumbling body through a crowd of dazed onlookers.
I'm at the largest house party in Wisconsin, or, as most people would say, I'm at Opening Day at Miller Park.""
Thanks to the generosity of my uncle, my roommate and I sit within sunflower-seed-spitting distance of home plate. On the field, the game is essentially over after one inning.
Bill Hall hits a three-run and a two-run home run and the Brewers cruise to a 13-4 victory over the Barry Bonds-less San Francisco Giants.
But on this sunny spring day the real story is the throng of 45,212 crazed lunatics paying $7.00 for 12-ounce bottles of great tasting and less filling beverages. Between innings and frequently during the middle of the game, they are the actors in this comic tragedy of peanuts and Crackerjacks.
In the bottom of the sixth inning, two 50-year-old women dressed like 20-year-olds stumble into our row. ""Is there a lap we can sit on?"" one of the fair maidens asks the older gentlemen to my left.
The women are obviously not in the right seats. I doubt they know which teams are playing. And I doubt the men they're flirting with are their husbands, but who knows?
The laps must not be that comfortable because less than an inning later the women are gone, presumably making a deposit in the nearest porcelain bowl or adding to the ever-expanding orange stream on the stairs.
Sometime in the fourth inning an extremely tall white man - with a gray mustache rivaled in crookedness only by the jagged caterpillar below the nose of Dave Wannstedt - stumbles down the stairs of section 113 and hugs a rather startled black Sports Service employee distributing assorted Miller products.
I'm not sure who Mr. Mustache is planning on voting for in the 2008 election, but his kind, drunk gesture showed me change I could believe in. Can he stomach another beer? Say it with me. Yes he can. Yes he can...
During the top of the third inning, a gentleman on his cell phone in the row in front of me stands and begins waving his arm at some other lush in the sea of humanity. Despite shouts of ""down in front,"" ""sit down [censored] hole,"" and finally the inevitable ""what the [censored],"" the man does not waver. Only after a barrage of peanuts rain down upon him does he relinquish his quest to find his friend on the other side of the stadium.
Throughout the game, the drunk man behind me continually asks my roommate and I why we are standing up when fly balls are hit to the warning track or deep into the outfield.
""Are you seriously standing up for a flyball?"" he questions time and again. He is either extremely jealous that we can stand and he cannot or merely fulfilling an age-old tradition of remaining seated at Brewer games.
True story - last year my completely sober friend and I were told to sit down by a bunch of fogies when there were two strikes and two outs on a Brewer batter in the ninth inning.
Back to the game. I can't remember the last time I've seen this many drunks over the age of 30.
How many of these model citizens will tell their little children never to swear in public or to drink in excess is unknown, but I really wish I had a microphone and camera to document some of these moments - for YouTube if not for blackmail.
During the seventh-inning stretch the crowd sings a stirring rendition of ""God Bless America.""
By now my hands are sticky from excess Secret Stadium Sauce and lightly coated with peanut shell dust. I am stuffed with brats and hot dogs. The Brewers are winning 13-4, and I am surrounded by the greatest cast of characters ever assembled at a venue of this magnitude.
Yes, God bless America. God bless baseball. And God bless Opening Day at Miller Park.
If you were drunk at Opening Day, e-mail Ryan at reszel@dailycardinal.com.
