Cleveland and LA in Milwaukee

Almost a week ago everyone from fans of the two teams to national sports personalities were upset about the fact that the Cleveland Indians were moving their home series against the Angels to Miller Park.

Naysayers predicted less than 10,000 people would attend the three games total. Even at just $10 a ticket for the lower two levels, people were saying this was Bud Selig handing off to his home city.

Turns out everyone was wrong.

Over the three days, more than 52,000 people headed to Miller Park to see the first American League series to be played in Milwaukee since the Brewers headed to the National League. Breaking it down, that's 19,000, 17,000 and 16,000 people at each game, give or take a few.

There was a traffic jam to get into the Miller Park parking lots and lines were 20 deep at the ticket windows before first pitch. Ticket officials were outside with stacks of tickets in their hands attempting to get people inside more quickly.

The Brewers didn't make money off of the series. All costs were recouped (it's something like $5000 a game to light the stadium) and the profit all went back to the Indians.

This guy is selling tickets from a stack to waiting fans IN THE FOURTH INNING.

The anecdotes that came from the week were spectacular stories, from the Cleveland native now living in Milwaukee who also happens to work at Miller park who was the first guy in his seat, a full hour before the gates opened to the man who has been at every Indian home game for 35 years banging away on the big chief bass drum. As soon as the details were finalized, the Indians called him up and flew him and his wife, and the drum, out for the series.

Or how the out of town fans, and the Indians players, really, really, really liked our slow-mo wave.

"When it all was finished, the team that hadn't played since the previous Wednesday pounded out 10 hits en route to a 7-6 win over the Los Angeles Angels. Yet afterward, the buzz in the Indians clubhouse wasn't Sizemore's three stolen bases or Shoppach's game-ending laser of a throw that nailed Erick Aybar attempting to steal second base.

No, the Indians wanted to talk about this crowd. And more specifically, a slow-motion wave the fans did during the seventh inning that nearly put the team in a trance. The slow-motion wave is a tradition that was started during football games at the University of Wisconsin.

"It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen," Borowski said. "I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me."

"I had never seen the slo-mo wave before," manager Eric Wedge said. "That locked me up."

For those who don't know, at Wisconsin football games we do the regular wave, the super-fast wave, the slo-mo wave and the split wave. Some bad YouTube evidence:

Apparently the people of Cleveland were very impressed with the turnout and wrote one of our newspaper columnists to share.

But aside from all the fun, games and Major League references, I was really proud to be a Milwaukeean this week. I'm not usually one to be all sappy and proud, but I don't know that this could have gone any better. The series was a PR flack's dream. Bud Selig and MLB have messed up in many occasions (hello All-Star game at Miller Park ending in a tie) but this week they proved that they do indeed get some things right.