Dugout Tavern Ends Split-Screen Experiment, Goes All-Brewers For World Series

WAUKESHA — Rick Holmstrom, 47, owner of Dugout Tavern on Grand Avenue, said Tuesday he is ending the one-screen compromise that governed his bar through the Brewers' divisional and championship series, and will dedicate all eight television banks, including two new units delivered that morning, to the World Series.

The arrangement replaces a policy Holmstrom introduced last month, when he set aside bank six, the one closest to the dartboards, for Brewers baseball while the other five banks and the bar's 98-inch shuffleboard-mounted screen stayed on the Packers. Holmstrom said the compromise worked through the NLDS and mostly held through the NLCS, but broke down for good last Thursday during a Packers-Vikings broadcast that overlapped with the ninth inning of a one-run game.

"Bank six had the baseball, and forty people were standing behind the two guys actually sitting at bank six," Holmstrom said. "Nobody was watching the Packers. The Packers screen was just on. I had a touchdown happen and the room didn't make a sound."

The silence

Holmstrom said he logged the moment on the notepad he has kept behind the register since September, writing "TD, no reaction, 8:51 p.m." underneath a running tally of Brewers-related complaints and compliments that had, by Thursday, flipped from 11-6 against the one-screen arrangement to 19-4 in favor of expanding it. He said the tally made the decision for him.

Dale Tackett, 58, the regular who has not missed a Packers home-opener watch party at Dugout since 2011 and who spent the NLDS splitting his attention between banks "like a tennis match," said he no longer objects. Tackett said the Vikings game was "fine, I guess," and that he watched the final three Brewers outs standing on a barstool with one knee on the bar rail.

"I came in here in September to defend bank four. I'm leaving in October asking the man for a ninth screen if he can find one."

— Dale Tackett, regular, 58

The sealed letter that arrived under the register in September, arguing the bar had been "a Packers house since the Favre years," remains taped to the underside of the register drawer. Holmstrom said the author has not come forward to request a refund of position, and that he considers the letter "settled business, filed, not reopened."

Two new screens, more sidewalk

The two new televisions, 55-inch units mounted Tuesday morning above the pool table and the coat rack respectively, bring the bar's total to eight screens, all showing the same World Series broadcast with the sound run through four of the bar's six speakers. Holmstrom said he placed the order the morning after the Brewers clinched the pennant and that the installer, working alone, finished both mounts in under ninety minutes.

Holmstrom also said he has added fourteen folding chairs and two patio heaters to the tavern's sidewalk seating along Grand Avenue, anticipating overflow crowds for games that run past the bar's normal 55-person indoor capacity. The city approved the temporary seating permit Monday, Holmstrom said, on the condition that the chairs are cleared from the sidewalk by 11 p.m. on weeknights.

Carol Jarocki, 39, who said in September she had been quietly rooting for the Brewers all season, called the all-screens arrangement "a relief, honestly," and said she no longer has to confirm her stool's sightline before sitting down. She said she has moved two seats closer to the register since bank six is no longer the only option.

What happens to football

Holmstrom said the Packers will return to all eight screens the moment the Brewers' season ends, win or lose, and that he has not decided whether to keep any of the new patio seating through football season. He said the men's-room television proposal from the sealed letter, which he rejected in September, remains "on the table in a general sense" for any future scheduling collision, though he declined to say when that table might be revisited.

For now, Holmstrom said, the notepad behind the register is retired. "Nothing left to tally," he said. "Everybody's watching the same thing."