A Brewers fan at Target Field Night 1: Why are we in a weather delay when it's not raining?

The national weather service had predicted severe thunderstorms, but for most of the day Friday it was bright and sunny and 100 degrees. (As I've mentioned many times, I live in Minnesota and work in downtown Minneapolis so when the Brewers come to Target Field it's like a holiday for me--Brewers and baseball without that five plus hour drive.) So on Friday, when it was quitting time, I threw on my shorts and Braun jersey and headed out to do some tailgating Minnesota style--that is, standing on the patio of one of the bars near Target Field. There is no parking lot for Target Field, just parking ramps, so there is no real tailgating. As much as I like tailgating Wisconsin style, I actually enjoy the downtown stadium in Minneapolis. It's a fun and festive atmosphere. Lots of Brewers fans, even more Twins fans, jammed into little beer gardens.

As game time approached, the sky darkened. By the time we reached our seats about 30 minutes before game time, the tarp came out. Tarp? Why not just close the roof? Oh, that's right, there is no roof. My understanding is that the footprint of Target Field was too small to allow for a retractable roof--plus, the money wasn't there. This did not prevent my friend Chad from chanting, "Close the roof. Close the roof. Close the roof." The Twins fans around us did not seem amused.

We were in left field and under an overhang so we just waited it out and soon enough the rain stopped. But the "weather delay" continued. From the radar that my sister's boyfriend pulled up on his phone, there was one last leg of the storm that was set to blow through in an hour. So we waited. (Apparently MLB would prefer for the game to not start and then stop so they try to wait for the entire storm to pass. At least this seems like the current trend.)

Finally at about 8:20, the storm hit.

When it finally came down, the rain didn't mess around. 

The game started at 9:10 p.m. Chad commented that Target Field surely set a new record for beer sales what with the Brewers in town and the fact that the seventh inning wasn't until around 11 p.m. The State Fair stand ran out of cheese curds. I asked our cashier how they could run out of cheese curds with a Wisconsin sports team in town and she seemed confused. She told us to get the french fries instead.

When the game finally started, Carlos Gomez hit a first inning home run. I realize that this is a very small sample size but Gomez's numbers against the Twins are pretty crazy. In 8 plate appearances, Gomez has five hits and two home runs. The line looks like this: .625/.625/1.500.

This would be the only lead of the night for the Brewers. Jim Thome hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the first and it just went down hill from there. After getting to within one run at 3-2 on a Rickie Weeks walk, a wild pitch and a Ryan Braun single, the Twins picked up two more runs in the fifth. Milwaukee went down quietly after that.

Speaking of quietly, I have had a cold all week and after a long week at work, a two-hour rain delay and having to let a few Ryan Braun hecklers know that they should "suck it", my voice was gone. Nothing more to say about this one anyway.

Twins 6, Brewers 2
Game played 7-1-11

They played some 80s heavy metal during the rain delay.