Review: Watching MLB.TV at the Union Terrace

Resolve: Is Wisconsin’s Union Terrace our country’s greatest public space?

I don’t think I’m telling any tales out of school, reader, when I submit that the City of New York has played, and will continue to play, a major role in this country’s popular culture.

The films of Woody Allen, sitcoms such as Seinfeld and Friends and 30 Rock, the music of Jay-Z and Mos Def and the Beastie Boys, the ubiquity of publications like the New York Times and the New Yorker and New York Magazine: each features, with some degree of prominence, the city that has been called by all sorts of people the “Biggest of Apples.”

Owing to the frequency with which New York is cited in our popular culture, one might easily make the case that there are, in fact, two New Yorks: one, the city as it exists in reality and, two, the city as it exists in the imagination.

Regardless of how one has experienced the former, it’s difficult to deny that there’s some glamour attached to the latter. Even in those instances where the city is portrayed as a lawless dystopia — like in Escape from New York, for example, or The Warriors, or any of the speeches from Rudy Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign — the mere fact that the city is invoked at all gives it a certain cultural gravitas.

Whether the city’s glamour is earned — that’s a matter for another post.

For the present moment, I’d like merely to submit this — namely, that if there were a direct correlation between the quality of a place and the frequency with which it appeared in popular media, the Terrace at the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union would likely be the setting for all the CSIs and Law and Orders combined.

I’ve eulogized the Terrace elsewhere in these pages; however, it can be summarized briefly by these six bullet points:

• Beer
• Brats
• Lake views
• Joie de vivre
• Esprit de corps
• Other beer

Owing to the excellence of this — possibly’s America’s greatest — public space, I endeavored to see if it might also serve as an excellent place to watch an American baseball game.

The remainder of this document is a brief account of my experience doing just that. The reader might consider it (i.e. this document) a companion to the piece I submitted recently on playing Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 for PS3 while listening to a game on MLB.com’s Gameday Audio.

On the Title of This Piece
If the title of this piece were composed in the spirit of total accuracy — and with no consideration for brevity, I mean — it might read something like this:

Review: Watching MLB.TV on My iPod Touch While Drinking a Delicious Brown Ale at Wisconsin’s Memorial Union Terrace

On Which Game I Watched
I watched the Cubs-Reds games from May 17th — the Garza-Volquez one. I used the Cubs stream, so’s to avoid any kind of Brennaman.

On the Cicumstances Under Which I Watched the Game
Having just returned some books at the campus’s main library, waiting for my wife to finish up at the gym so we could walk home together.

Weather: slightly cool (ca. 65 degrees?), but sunny. Time of day: late afternoon.

On the Delicious Brown Ale I Drank
The delicious brown ale I drank was Madtown Nutbrown from Madison-based Ale Asylum. While “Madtown” is a regrettable nickname for the city, it doesn’t appear to affect the taste of the beer, which is one of the better brown ales I’ve tasted (and preferable, I think, to Fat Squirrel, local brewery New Glarus’s submission to the brown-ale category).

On the Quality of the Internet Connection
There are a shortage of places in this world that provide both (a) a dependable wi-fi signal and (b) beer. By shortage, of course, I mean “any number below 100 percent.”

In this regard, the Terrace is excellent. The wi-fi signal is very strong and allowed for uninterrupted streaming.

On the Dangers of Eavesdropping
A danger of going to the Terrace alone is that one, having no companion with whom to talk, finds himself eavesdropping against his will.

This happened to me occasionally during the course of my experience — and it was to my great disadvantage, as the conversation which I overheard was what I’ll call a “cavalcade of banality.”

Among the topics I had the misfortune of overhearing:

• Having one’s kitchen remodeled, the unchecked horrors of.
• Having one’s bathroom remodeled, the necessity of (every 20 years or so).
• Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, the relative intelligences of.

Mind you, reader, I don’t particularly care for Bachmann or Palin. But like most anyone who’s set his hand upon a hot stove, I make a point of avoiding those things which bring me displeasure.

Image courtesy the Univ. of Wisconsin’s Campus Photo Library.