My son was 5 months old when he went to his first baseball game with his dad, his uncle and his cousins, to watch his two teams, the Brewers and the Mets, go toe to toe. It was our family boys night out and while he was kinda interested, he was mostly startled when the crowd went mad.

But that season we kept going back and he got more and more interested and lasted longer and longer each time. Because bed time was around 8, we started going to day games and those 6:05 starts whenever possible.

Now, he's 2 1/2 and he's been to more games than many of you, I bet. When the stadium went dark last autumn, he never lost the baseball bug. We pass the stadium a lot, so the subject of baseball games and our attendance at them comes up often in the off-season. We made a number of visits to Friday's Front Row and to the Brewers' merch blow-out sale (in the visiting team's clubhouse, which my son calls "The Mets room" ... that's my boy) just to get into the stadium and attempt to satisfy the jones.

On Saturday, we pulled into the parking lot, walked across the bridge over Highway 41 and into the stadium, which was packed to the gills (at least in the lower levels, which were the only open ones), to watch the Brewers beat the Royals in an exhibition game.

If I thought we might start from scratch and lose interest by the third inning, I was wrong. The pretzel lasted at least into the fourth and the promise of the sausage race carried us into the sixth. By the time the middle of the seventh rolled around, my son was still interested but I could tell he was waning a little, so we talked it over and agreed to leave. I learned quickly that it's better to leave on a high note than to push and end up leaving in a tizzy.

I can think of a lot of good ways to spend a day, but I can hardly think of a better one than sitting at Miller Park with my boy close by my side, laughing, talking, eating, watching baseball and getting the occasional hug.