Just about a perfect night of baseball. I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a 1-0 game before. Both starters dominant through the first three, then continuing to toss shutout innings but clearly starting to tire, allowing more hard-hit outs. The enjoyable tension of wondering which manager would pull his starter first and what would happen when they did. On the hill for the Brewers: Tobias Myers, a man I have never heard before. 26-year-old rookie on his 6th team, it turns out, never made it to the majors until this year and now is arguably the Brewers’ best starter. His first team, it turns out, was the Orioles! He was who we traded to the Rays for Tim Beckham.

But yes. Perfect night. Roof open, 6:10 start, warm but not hot, free William Contreras jerseys for everyone in attendance. Upper deck seats over left field. Myers strikes out 7 in the first four innings. Nobody gets on, nobody gets on, nobody gets on. I was excited to see Elly de la Cruz (remembering, years ago, coming to a Brewers-Reds game excited to see Billy Hamilton) and de la Cruz excitingly swung and missed a lot. AB pointed out that the Reds had two country-named players in the lineup, Jonathan India and Ty France. Myers gave up a single and then a sharp lineout and got pulled but Joel Payamps got out of the inning. The Reds starter got pulled and Tony Santillan, great stats on the year, comes in. Sal Frelick has a great at bat, fouls off pitch after pitch straight back, just what you have to do to make a short reliever throw more pitches than he wants to. (Remembering, years ago: Jesus Aguilar fouling off pitch after pitch before finally homering to beat the Marlins.) Frelick grounds to short but after that Santillan gave up a 2-out homer, an authoritative line shot into the Brewers bullpen, to Rhys Hoskins, and then it wasn’t over but it felt over. Devin Williams time, back after a long spell of injury. Elly de la Cruz led off the inning with more exciting swings and misses. Williams struck out the side. Fireworks. CJ is off to college in the fall and while this is not likely to be the last time the kids and I go to a Brewers game, it’s the last time it will be part of our ordinary life all living in Madison for CJ to say, in the middle of the afternoon, “should we go to the Brewers tonight?” and for us to just do it. I was thinking the whole game about the lastness of it, and it was a good last game, even if it wasn’t really the last game.