A World Series dream come true

In 1982, when the Milwaukee Brewers were last in the World Series, Russ Ziegelbauer was a young boy living in Saukville with his parents Ron and Jan, who owned Ron and Jan’s Upholstery. 

He remembers begging his parents to let him stay up to watch the big games, and they refused on school nights. So he snuck out of his room to sit on the stairs and stealthily watch, his father Ron sitting below him on his recliner. He got caught, he said, when he quietly cheered.

His dad’s reaction, Ziegelbauer said, was simple. He told him, “It’s the World Series. Come down here. Just don’t tell your mother.”

Forty-four years later, Ziegelbauer, a 1992 graduate of Port High, has a better seat for the World Series. He was at Friday’s and Saturday’s games at American Family Field and planned to take his daughters, Robin and Rilee, each to one of Monday’s and Tuesday’s watch parties at the stadium so they can experience World Series baseball.

“Awesome,” he said Sunday when asked about the weekend games. “It’s been a fun ride. This is great.

“This is something special. Very, very cool.”

He also has tickets to Friday’s and Saturday’s games, if they’re needed.

It’s almost an understatement to say  Ziegelbauer, who lives in Kewaskum, is an avid Brewers fan. He’s bought packages to their home games for more than a decade — he went to about 35 games this year — has a closet that he said is split between work clothes and Brewers garb and his office is filled with bobble-heads he and his family have collected through the years. 

His dog is named Uecker after Bob Uecker, the Brewers noted play-by-play announcer, and his oldest daughter is named after Robin Yount, the Hall of Fame shortstop for the Brewers who is Ziegelbauer’s favorite player.

Yount, he said, earned a place in his heart because he was loyal to Milwaukee, even after being offered a role on other, more talented teams.

Naming rights for his first-born were something he told his pastor was non-negotiable before he and his wife Wendy married, Ziegelbauer said.

Despite all that, Ziegelbauer said he doesn’t deserve the label superfan.   

“I don’t paint my face. I don’t do crazy things,” he said. “I’m just an average guy, a dad with kids. I just like baseball.”

He’s passed that love on to his daughters. Ziegelbauer said his bucket list includes visiting all Major League stadiums — he’s already been to 13 — so this summer the three of them took a road trip to Kansas City and Cincinnati, where they took in games at the stadiums. His wife opted to stay home.

“They said, ‘This is awesome. Can we do this again?’” Ziegelbauer said.

He chuckled at the fact he had to write an excuse for Rilee to get out of school for the trip, noting his mother wrote him one when he turned 16 and attended opening day, which was on a school day.

He’s gone to about 20 openers, Ziegelbauer said.

“It might be more than that,” he said. “It should be a national holiday, in my opinion.”

Ziegelbauer has always gone to as many Brewers games as he could manage. In high school, he said, he and his friends would drive to County Stadium, buy tickets for $4, park for $5 and enjoy the day.

“We probably went to 40 games or so (between the ages of 16 and 18),” he said.

But he and his brother Randy, aka Red, got serious about their love of the team after their mother discovered a box of their old toys.

Ziegelbauer checked their value on eBay, proposing they sell the toys and split the money. It was enough, he said, to cover a 10-game ticket package for the two of them.

A year later, he said, they found more toys, many of them Transformers, and got tickets again, this time for 20 games, and a tradition was born. In 2012, he started buying four tickets for the games.

Even after his brother died at age 37 in 2014, Ziegelbauer continued the tradition.

So when the Brewers made it to the World Series, Ziegelbauer said, there was no question about whether he would buy tickets for those games.

“It was my brother’s and my goal to go to the World Series together,” he said. “We were so close so many times.

“I always said, if the Brewers ever went to the World Series and tickets were $2,500, I will do it. It’s about the memories. 

“I can always make more money. I’m always going to have the memories.”

Since he bought the 20-game package, Ziegelbauer said, the tickets cost far less than that, so he bought two tickets for each home game.

He asked his wife if she wanted to go, but she said she would take care of their daughters, who both have special needs, so he asked friends to accompany him.

“I try to take someone different to each game,” he said, adding that if the Series goes to seven games he’ll ask his wife again if she wants to attend.

“If she doesn’t want to go, I’m sure I can find somebody to,” he said.

Baseball players are notoriously superstitious, and Ziegelbauer has a few of his own. He’s worn the same jersey to all three game ones (the divisional playoffs, league championships and World Series) and the same jerseys to each game too.

He’s also tailgated before each game — including the World Series, where stadium parking is $75.

“We have to tailgate,” he said.  “I don’t care if we’re having steaks or hot dogs, we have to do it.”

This year’s Brewers, Ziegelbauer said, were different from the start. They had the talent and kept their heads down from the start, always looking ahead to their goal of making it to the Series.

And unlike other teams that have superstars leading them, the Brewers are a team.

“There’s no superstars,” Ziegelbauer said. “That’s what I love. They pick each other up. They support each other. They cheer for each other.”

And if they win the Series? He said he’ll probably buy some new Brewers World Series gear, have the rally towels he’s been collecting for the past two decades made into a blanket and celebrate.

“That would be so awesome,” Ziegelbauer said.