Need a laugh? Funniest Crew moments

MILWAUKEE -- Perhaps the original blooper in Brewers history was supplied in the summer of 1970 by retired aviation engineer Milt Mason, who vowed to live in a trailer perched atop the County Stadium scoreboard until the city’s new baseball team drew 40,000 fans. The man who came to be called “Bernie Brewer” stayed up there 41 days until a bat day crowd of 44,387 for a 4-3 win over the Indians freed him on Aug. 16. Mason slid down a rope, sustaining burns to his hands and legs.

Oops.

Unofficial Brewers historian Mario Ziino helped us compile 10 other comical moments in franchise history, all of them less painful than Bernie Brewer’s original descent.

1. Seeing double
June 12, 1977
Due to a clubhouse theft of everything but their bats, the Kansas City Royals were forced to wear the Brewers’ road jerseys for a game at County Stadium. Adding insult, the Brewers’ Jerry Augustine scattered seven hits across a 4-0 shutout, defeating former teammate Jim Colborn and the “Milwaukee” Royals.

2. Easter egg hunt
April 19, 1987
How loose were the Brewers by the afternoon of a sunny Easter Sunday at County Stadium? They had won 11 games in a row to start that season, including the only no-hitter in franchise history four days earlier in Baltimore. Milwaukee would make it 12 in a row with a remarkable 6-4 win over the Rangers in which Rob Deer hit a game-tying, three-run homer in the ninth inning before Dale Sveum delivered a walk-off, two-run shot. Fans remember the home runs, but players tend to recall athletic trainer John Adam’s pregame Easter egg hunt that went right up to game time, with players searching for the egg bearing their uniform number. Paul Molitor found his egg perched on third base. Robin Yount’s was in the center-field grass. Catcher B.J. Surhoff’s didn’t appear until he reached back for a baseball from home-plate umpire Larry McCoy and McCoy dropped an egg with the No. 5 into Surhoff’s open palm. The dugout exploded with laughter.

3. The Yount-Young game
Aug. 28, 1988
After the second inning, Tigers manager Sparky Anderson pointed out to the umpiring crew that Robin Yount’s name appeared twice on the lineup card that had been exchanged before first pitch. Brewers manager Tom Trebelhorn had Yount hitting in his usual three-hole and playing center field, and the skipper had meant to have newly acquired Mike Young batting fifth as the designated hitter. But Trebelhorn accidentally entered Yount’s name twice. After 20 minutes of debate, Yount was forced to leave the game, and his replacement, Jim Adduci, helped rally the team back from a 9-4 deficit. The Brewers scored six runs in the sixth and two in the seventh to beat the Tigers, 12-10, with Adduci contributing a single, a double, a sacrifice fly, two RBIs and two runs scored.

4. The Racing sausages
June 27, 1993
To the surprise of 45,580 fans at County Stadium, the sausage race video on the scoreboard in the sixth inning came to life when the bratwurst, Italian and Polish sausages emerged from the left-field gate and sprinted to home plate in the first live race by mascots in professional baseball. The Brewers dropped a 5-4 decision to the Blue Jays, but the sausages became a sizzling success, and soon the idea spread across baseball.

5. The Brant Brown game
Sept. 23, 1998
Sammy Sosa homered twice to tie the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire at 65 home runs, and the Cubs had this one well in hand with a 7-0 lead at the seventh inning stretch. But the Brewers scored four runs in the bottom of the seventh, one run in the eighth, then got a 8-7 walk-off win when Cubs left fielder Brant Brown dropped Geoff Jenkins’ fly ball at the edge of the warning track with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. All three runs scored on the error, one of the most memorable bloopers in County Stadium history.

6. Miller Park hawk
April 24, 2011
Rickie Weeks homered and Randy Wolf scattered four hits over eight sharp innings of a 4-1 win over the Astros at Miller Park, but the star of the game was the small hawk that attacked another bird over center field in the third inning and then settled on the right-field foul line to take in the ballgame. Houston outfielder Hunter Pence warily kept one eye on the action at home plate and the other on the bird of prey. Someone quickly created a Twitter account for the hawk and followed only one fellow user: Pence.

“It looked at me like, ‘Why is the roof closed? I can't get out of here,’" Wolf said.

7. Braun takes a tumble
Aug. 31, 2011
Ryan Braun had a chance for an inside-the-park home run against Jake Westbrook and the Cardinals, only to take a spectacular tumble around third base in the third inning of the Brewers' 8-3 loss. Some industrious teammates, led by pitcher Shaun Marcum, showed up early the following morning to create not one or two, but three outlines depicting Braun’s tumble with white athletic tape. There was one on a protective screen, meant to simulate Braun going airborne around third base; then another on the ground where he fell; and a third where he’d fallen again after trying to get up. Braun’s phone was flooded with trash talk from friends, and he even had to hear about it over dinner that night with former NBA star Reggie Miller, a neighbor in California who’d come for a visit.

8. Segura steals first base
April 19, 2013
You had to see it to believe it. In the bottom of the eighth inning of a 5-4 win over the Cubs, the Brewers’ Jean Segura hit an infield single and stole second base before Ryan Braun walked. So far, so good. But the inning descended into madness when Cubs reliever Shawn Camp caught Segura off second base with a good pickoff move. With Segura in a rundown, Braun advanced, and both runners wound up on second base at the same time. By rule, Braun was out. But Segura mistakenly thought he’d been called out, too, so he started trotting toward the dugout. When he realized his error, he returned to first base, where he remained as the inning continued. If all that was not crazy enough, Segura tried to steal second base again and was thrown out.

9. Bonus bases for Arcia
Aug. 5, 2016
Three years later with a new team, Jean Segura was trying to be a good guy, and look what it got him. Brewers rookie shortstop Orlando Arcia -- the team’s most lauded prospect since Ryan Braun -- who was three days into his big league career, rapped a game-tying RBI single to right field in the fourth inning. When the baseball returned to D-backs shortstop Segura on the field, he flipped it to Milwaukee’s dugout for safekeeping. Trouble was, the umpires had not called time yet, so the baseball was live and Arcia was awarded two bases. The Brewers couldn’t capitalize, however, and went on to lose the game in 11 innings, 3-2.

10. Let’s go for ice cream
July 1, 2017
Who can predict when a hunger pang will interrupt a day at work? Orlando Arcia and the Brewers were sweating through an 8-4 win over the Marlins on a sweltering Saturday at Miller Park when he chased a foul ball into the stands. A fan in the front row had turned his back to the field while following the baseball, so Arcia helped himself to a spoonful of ice cream. For the record, he said it was chocolate.

Bonus: Relax Roxane
Aug. 28, 2019
Unless fans had been following news of Christian Yelich’s appearance in the final edition of ESPN’s Body Issue, they might have missed this one when it happened in 2019. Yelich said he expected some negative commentary about his decision to bare all in the interest of art, and indeed one Twitter user named Roxane wrote of her dissent. Yelich’s two-word response -- “Relax Roxane” -- went viral, and when he stepped to the plate that night, it was to the song “Roxanne” by The Police. Yelich stifled a grin.