June 4, 2009

Waterloo Bucks vs Madison Mallards

Warner Park (The Duck Pond)

Madison, WI

Let me start with a disclaimer.  A couple of days before attending the Mallards game on June 4, I visited the Shoe Box in Black Earth, WI to get a new pair of shoes.  The Shoe Box is owned by Steve Schmitt, owner of the Mallards.  As I was checking out, Steve approached me and asked how I was doing.  He then told the person taking my money not to charge me for the Mallards t-shirt I was buying ($10).  He then handed me a Mallards game program ($3.00) and a magnetic schedule, and thanked me for shopping at the Shoe Box.  Needless to say, I like Steve Schmitt and the way he runs his business.  Even so, I’ll try to be objective.

I started out by ordering my ticket online on the Mallards website (www.MallardsBaseball.com).  As an aside, I had originally planned on going to Rochester, MN to see a Honkers game, but chose instead to see the Mallards because the Honkers did not offer box seats online.  Anyway, the Mallards use the same company to handle their online ticket sales (Glitnir Ticketing) that the Loggers use.  However, you end up paying a $3.00 convenience fee when you order Mallards tickets online instead of the $1.50 charged by the Loggers.  The process is exactly the same, so I’m not sure why the fee is twice as much.

I got to Warner Park about one hour and forty-five minutes before the game.  I wanted to shoot some video and I didn’t want it to be too crowded.  As I pulled into the parking lot, I was amazed to see several hundred people waiting to get into the ballpark.  Once I got through the gate I found out why.  The Mallards were giving away free bobbleheads and t-shirts to the first 1,000 people.   I ended up with some swag, but you can see from the attached video that the stadium was fairly crowded even an hour-and-a-half before game time.

Parking was easy.  Warner Park features a huge parking lot right next to the ballpark.  It was easy in and easy out.

The people working at Warner Park are incredibly friendly and accommodating.  This is an obvious reflection of Steve Schmitt’s customer service philosophy.  In fact, I’ll talk about the stadium food in a minute, but for now I just want to say that after buying a hot dog, I ended up dropping it while trying to get a napkin.  One of the concession workers saw this happen and immediately offered to get me a new hot dog at no charge.  That’s good service.

My first impression of Warner Park was a sense of history.  I’m not sure why.  The ballpark is only 27 years old (built in 1982), but it feels older.  The Mallards have done a great job of making the ballpark feel nostalgic, even if there really isn’t all that much nostalgia associated with the “Duck Pond.”

My seat was a box seat two rows off the field between home plate and the first base dugout.  The seats at Warner Park are not the most comfortable.  The box seats are metal benches with backs and the individual seats are separated by metal arm rests.  They are narrow and my back started hurting after about three innings.  The seats are an unfortunate negative to an otherwise great ballpark.

The Mallards offer a wide variety of food including the usual fare (hot dogs, hamburgers, etc) and more creative dishes like beef brisket barbeque, pizza, and a hamburger with fried cheese curds and onion rings on top.  The thing that excited me was that the Mallards offer Chicago Style Hot Dogs.

I’m somewhat of a Chicago Hot Dog connoisseur.  I take my Chicago Dogs seriously and I expect others to do the same thing.  Unfortunately, the Mallards let me down.  First, the dogs served at Warner Park are Chicago Red Hots.  They’re good hot dogs, but when I think Chicago dogs, I think Vienna All-Beef Hot Dogs.  Also, the concession stand served the dog on a plain bun (as opposed to a poppyseed bun) with no condiments.  I had to put the condiments on myself and my only choices were plain pickle relish (as opposed to neon green relish), something that resembled onions, beer-n-brat mustard, and ketchup (a Chicago Dog never has ketchup).  Needless to say, I was disappointed.

A few minutes later my hope was renewed.  The Stoddard Smokehouse (one of the concession stands at Warner Park) had Chicago-style Hot Dogs and they were $1.00 more than I had paid at the other concession stand.  When I asked why, I was told that they load up the hot dogs with all of the fixins’.  I had to give it a try.

The dog itself was a Chicago Red Hot again, but it had neon green relish, real onions, a couple of tomato slices (as opposed to wedges), celery salt, and mustard.  Unfortunately, the mustard was again the beer-n-brat mustard (brown mustard with horseradish) instead of the prescribed yellow mustard.  The second dog was slightly better than the first, but it still wasn’t a true Chicago Dog.

Enough about the food.  If I wasn’t so particular about my Chicago dogs, I wouldn’t have had a problem.  Plus, there were so many other things to choose from, I should have just tried something else.  I’ll just end by saying that there was a better selection of food in Madison than in La Crosse, but it was generally more expensive in Madison.  That’s not to say it is outrageously priced; just more expensive.

The between innings entertainment was the usual fare, but again, that’s no fault of the Mallards.  You can only do so many different things and the Mallards did them all well.

The PA announcer was also part of the entertainment.  He told jokes, talked to the vendors roaming the stands selling concessions, and had a great rapport with the crowd.  The thing I liked the best was when he was announcing the starting lineup for the visiting Waterloo Bucks.  As he would announce a player, the crowd would yell out “Who?” and the announcer would the repeat the players last name.  Then the crowd would respond “Ohh.”

The Mallards have two merchandise booths and a large selection of merchandise.  I already had two Mallards t-shirts (the gift from Steve Schmitt and the freebie I got when I entered Warner Park), buy I wanted one more.  The one I really wanted was $28, but I couldn’t justify that for a t-shirt.  Instead, I opted for a $14 t-shirt and a $6.00 logo ball.

Overall, I was very impressed with the job the Mallards do at Warner Park.  Steve Schmitt and GM Vern Stenman bend over backwards for their visitors, and their visitors respond by being loyal fans who love their Mallards.  Year in and year out, the Mallards lead the Northwoods League by a sustantial margin in attendance.  If you want to learn how to run a college league team (or a minor league team for that matter), you can learn a lot from the Mallards.

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