SPIRITS : Ballpark ale: If not pricey, riotous
Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008
We’d said it before: Drinkies is not here for the beer.
The lure of a ballpark is still the game, even if we’re not following the teams or the leagues they play in. Baseball is sufficient unto itself, every game reveals intricacies of character, Field of Dreams, fathers playing catch with sons, etc. There are plenty of cheaper places to drink beer.
But if you’re going to drink at a ballpark, beer is a reasonable choice. It’s effete to sip wine in the bleachers and inelegant to mix cocktails under a stadium seat. At North Little Rock’s Dickey-Stephens Park you can retreat to Bill Valentine’s excellent restaurant for pinot noir and limoncello, but that’s not really being at the ballgame — that’s more like hanging in a VIP suite. Which isn’t a bad thing, but a different quality of experience than being at a ballgame. If you’re air-conditioned, you’re not at a ballgame.
So we’ll drink a beer at the ballpark. We know more about baseball than beer, though we understand beer is a universe unto itself and that there are people (a lucky few perhaps ) who devote their lives to discovering beer’s myriad charms and chronicling their adventures among the hops and malt. Beer snobs exist as surely as wine and whiskey snobs, but that doesn’t mean this stuff is simple. Beer is too large and deep a subject to be treated flippantly — just because you can’t tell the difference between Miller Lite and Coors doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
While there are people who prefer stouts. porters, ales, bocks et al., to the homogenized nationally advertised brands that shoulder each other in the supermarket cold case, for most Americans the only real issue with beer is its drink- ability. People want a beer they can suck down like water when they’re good and thirsty.
For the record, Drinkies can tell the difference between beer we really like and beer that’s passable when it’s cold. But we’re hardly experts. We consume maybe a case of the stuff a year, but we’ve learned to drink what we like, which, unfortunately for us, is not the cheap stuff. In fact, we’ve noticed an almost direct correlation to the price of a beer and our taste for it. (We’d probably love the 26 percent alcohol Samuel Adams Utopias limited edition that sells for $ 100 a bottle. But we’ll never know because we are not that big a sucker. )
But at the ballgame, we usually have what everyone else is having, if it’s cold and we’re hot. Maybe it’s because no matter what the brand, ballpark beer is expensive. According to CNBC Web logger Darren Rovell — who believes there should be a minimum price on ballpark beer to curb alcohol-related bad behavior — Philadelphia’s Citizen Bank Park has the cheapest beer in major-league baseball. For $ 5 you can get a 21-ounce beer, which works out to 24 cents an ounce. Rovell says the average price of a major-league ballpark beer is 35 cents an ounce, and that you’ll have to pay at least 60 cents an ounce for a beer at Boston’s Fenway Park, which beat out Atlanta’s Turner Field (54 cents an ounce ) as the most expensive venue.
DICKEY-STEPHENS At Dickey-Stephens Park the price of beer is fairly reasonable — domestic brews Miller Lite, Coors, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Busch will run you $ 2. 75 for a 12-ounce serving, or about 23 cents per ounce. Move up a class to Fat Tire, locally owned Diamond Bear or Boulevard and you’ll pay 50 cents more per serving, or about 27 cents an ounce. A slightly better deal can be made in the park’s Beer Garden, where you can buy a 16-ounce draft of Miller Lite or Coors Lite for $ 3. 25, or about 20 cents an ounce. A 24-ounce serving is $ 1 more, or about 18 cents an ounce. Good times.
But what’s really outstanding about the Beer Garden at Dickey-Stephens is that it offers a handful of craft drafts — Fat Tire, Boulevard Wheat, Bitburger, Diamond Bear Pale Ale and our favorite, the slightly spicy golden-red Hook Slide Ale, which is brewed by Bosco’s especially for the ballpark. (While Hook Slide Ale is available at Bosco’s in the River Market, it’s brewed in Memphis. At least that’s what the guy pouring our beer told us. )
One of these will set you back a whopping $ 3. 75 for 16 ounces and $ 4. 75 for 24 ounces. Which works out to 23 and 20 cents an ounce, respectively. Which means that, all in all, we’re decidedly better off here than in Philadelphia. (Though the Philly ballpark apparently has a nice selection of locally brewed crafts with intriguing names like Sly Fox Pikeland Pils, Troegs Sunshine Pils and Flying Fish Extra Pale ale. )
While beer is ubiquitous in America, most of us choose our beer the same way we choose our presidential candidates. We make lots of noise about how character matters but we usually settle for something bland and cool. Almost any beer will suffice at a ballpark because it’s rarely the focus of our attention. We might be watching the game or basking in one of those signature American experiences, but the beer — like the umpires — should never draw undue attention to itself.
NESTOR CHYLAK This month’s concoction is named in honor of the longtime American League umpire who presided over the June 4, 1974, game between the Cleveland Indians and the Texas Rangers at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. It is a recipe for disaster. Take 25, 314 fans — or about three times as many as normally attend your games. Entice them to the park by offering to sell them as many 8-ounce cups of Stroh’s as they could drink for 10 cents apiece. Have the Rangers’ Lenny Randle slide hard into Indians second baseman Jack Brohamer to break up a double play in the fourth inning.
Have thousands of uninhibited fans throw hot dogs, cups of 10-cent beer and a gallon jug of Thunderbird wine at Rangers players. Have a naked man run out to second base when the Rangers’ Tom Grieve hits a home run. Have the crowd chant “Hit ’em again ! Harder ! Harder !” after Rangers’ pitcher Ferguson Jenkins is hit in the stomach with a line drive and crumples to the ground.
Have Indians pitcher Milt Wilcox retaliate against Randle in the eighth by throwing behind his head. Have Randle lay a bunt down the first base line and throw a forearm shiver into Wilcox when he comes over to field the play. Have Indians first baseman John Ellis punch Randle, inciting a benches-clearing brawl.
In the ninth inning, have an inebriated fan run onto the field and steal Ranger leftfielder Jeff Burroughs’ cap. Have Burroughs trip while chasing the fan and have Rangers’ manager Billy Martin lead his players onto the field, wielding bats. Have a group of about 200 rowdy fans, reportedly wielding chains, knives and parts of seats they’d pulled apart, leap onto the field to confront the Rangers. Have Indians manager Ken Aspromonte order his players out of the dugout to help the Rangers face the fans, who — confronted with less than half their number of angry professional athletes — quickly begin to lose their appetites for battle. Have the organist play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in a pathetic attempt to restore order.
Have poor Rusty Torres, the Indians outfielder who represented the winning run on second base — and who would be in three foreited games in his career — run for his life to get away from the bad-intentioned fans.
Finally have Nestor Chylak, after being hit in the head and cut by a hurled stadium seat, forfeit the game to the Rangers. Have the Cleveland police take more than half an hour to get things calmed down. Arrest nine fans. Go down in infamy.
E-mail: pmartin@arkansasonline. com
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