The Major League Baseball club planted the 18-inch team mascots overnight on Tuesday at various parks, buildings and beaches, with tweeting clues for the hunt, which was to have started at 7AM. Unfortunately, some less than sportsmanlike fans staked out parks and tracked delivery vehicles, then scooped up bunches of the gnomes, some bragging about their scores on Twitter.

GONE WRONG:  

The actions resulted in dozens of angry fans taking to Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets to voice their displeasure with the ballclub's management of the promotion and with greedy fans.

on the mess quoted a Brewers spokesman saying: "It's disappointing. The intent of the promotion and the rules of the promotion were eminently clear -- it was one per household." The spokesman called response to the promotion "staggering".

Disappointed fans of the 2nd-place Brewers tweeted comments such as: “FAIL with the promo. Of course people were gonna cheat and go early. Should've had 1 rep at each location to prevent that :/” and “Oh. Someone did cheat and take all of the @bernie_brewer lawn ornaments from what looks like more than 1 place...You call yourself a fan?”