Behind Home Plate & Beyond: Free Day at Miller Park

Yesterday, I wrote about the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, a great organization that sponsors "Gifts to the Community", with free access to area places and attractions one day each month in 2015 to celebrate their 100 years of service.  One of the gifts mentioned was a free behind-the-scenes visit to Miller Park, home of the Brewers baseball team.  I was fortunate to attend this event in September and got some really cool shots of the stadium that a lot of fans don't get to see when they're at the games.

I spent a lot of time down by the field where we visitors has (restricted) access.  Although the Brewers were playing in Pittsburgh that day, the grounds crew still had to do their work, so we couldn't go onto the field itself.  However, we did get to see the visitors' dugout, and I spent much of my time practicing my architecture photography skills on the stadium's massive arches.

This photo was my favorite one of the day:

 

In addition to the field, we got to see many of the stadium's other features like the warm-up pitching area, complete with the phones to the manager and home dugout:

The visitors' locker room:

The reporters' room, which sits behind home plate, and apparently, gets hit with a lot of foul balls through the open windows.  Some of the batters are nice enough to autograph the damage they've done.

And we also got to glimpse Bob Uecker's announcing booth.  Uecker is the voice of the Brewers and played with the team starting in 1961.  You may also remember him as the announcer in the film "Major League", which was shot at our former baseball park, County Stadium.

I've only been to a few games at Miller Park, but still never noticed the nice statues they have around the stadium.  Two statues are of Brewer Legends Robin Yount and Hank Aaron (who started as a Milwaukee Brave) and one is of Bob Uecker.

The most poignant statue that lies a bit farther away from the stadium is of three construction workers.  On July 14, 1999, three men working on the construction of Miller Park were killed when a crane dubbed "Big Blue" collapsed.  This statue lies in tribute to those workers.  For more information on the tragedy, click here.

It was a fun and fascinating day to be at Miller Park on that September day and a fantastic end to an incredible summer in Southeastern Wisconsin.  I will be posting more about my other summer adventures soon.