It was just after the completion of the top of the third inning after a Brewers pitcher struck out three Bird Island batters in a row to bring his game strikeout totals to nine for the game.

Myself, announcer Bob Reinhart and scoreboard operator Joe Eckstein were sitting in the press box at Mueller Park when a baseball fan, Bruce Melzer, peered into the press box and asked “What is the name of that Brewers pitcher?”

We told him, “Ethan Stade.”

His response was, “He is pretty good.”

Yes, he was.

Six innings and 17 strikeouts later, Stade had rewritten the history books for New Ulm amateur baseball when he fanned an unheard of 26 batters in a 5-0 win over Bird Island — a Class B team that had entered their meeting with the BrewCrew as the preseason No. 2 team in Class B.

The only out that did not have “K” next to it was a leadoff ninth-inning groundball that was fielded by New Ulm first baseman Trevor Nissen, who stepped on first before the left-handed Stade completed his domination of the Bullfrogs by fanning his 25th and 26 batters of the game.

Stade’s 26 strikeout broke the previous New Ulm record of 24 set back in 1967 by Dick Cordes, who pitched for the Millers. Like Stade, Cordes was a left-hander and it was found out that Cordes was Stade’s grandmother’s cousin.

Stade’s 26 Ks in a nine-inning regular season amateur baseball game is believed to be a record.

Just over five days since his record-setting night, Stade, who fanned 70 batters in 42 1/3 innings last season for the Brewers, said that he still has not wrapped his head around what he did on the mound at Mueller Park.

“I have seen some of the posts on Twitter — I saw that they talked about it on the Twins broadcast [Saturday] and it is just unbelievable,” Stade said about his 116-pitch performance. “It seems surreal.”

Stade said that as the game went along, he and his catcher, Ayden Jensen, would talk between innings, mostly about pitch selection.

“When it got to the top of the batting order, their batters were more disciplined, so we talked about switching up pitches with a first-pitch slider or mix it up,” Jensen said.

Stade said that when he started the game, he only wanted to throw five innings because his arm was not used to throwing a lot of pitches yet

Jensen said that he did not realize what was going on until the last inning.

“I was just playing the game and we talked about pitches between innings, but we did not talk about the strikeouts,” he said. “We just wanted to attack the next batter.”

Jensen said that before the top of the ninth inning –“Ruggy” — Brewers player Cory Schaefer — walked by him and said that he had never seen 27 strikeouts in a game.

Watching Stade throw strikeout after strikeout, Brewers manager Al Flor said that the chatter on the bench consistent of one comment.

“Unbelievable.”

Flor said it was like watching something that we do not understand.

“There was something in the stars [Friday] aligned to make history,” he said.

Flor said that when Stade fanned three straight batters in the top of the eighth inning to raise his total to 24 strikeouts, there was talk that Stade could do something seemingly impossible in 27 strikeouts.

“We had been talking about that since after the seventh inning,” he said. “We knew that we were seeing something special comparable to a no-hitter and a perfect game. But to rewrite the history books and once he got his second wind [in the fifth inning] and his arm was feeling OK, we let him go on. He had that ‘Immaculate Inning’ in the fifth (nine pitches, three strikeouts), it became more feasible because of the pitch count will be down where it is manageable.”

When asked if he was disappointed in the groundball out to start the ninth inning, Flor laughingly said that they razzed the first baseman after the game that he should have missed it on purpose.

“But that is not our nature — it was a big game for us,” Flor said. “The seedings for our district are by coaches vote.”

Flor said that he knows that he will never see what happened Friday at Mueller Park again.

“I have been involved in perfect games and no-hitters and to the second-place game in Class C in the state tournament,” he said. “But I have never seen a anything like Friday.”

Stade said that he knows for a fact that he will never repeat his Friday performance again with 26 strikeouts.

“And if somebody were to beat my record, they would need 27,” he said. “So I would assume the record is safe, but you never know.”