Baseball

I like baseball. Not because I think the game is terribly exciting, but because it is a great way to spend an afternoon. A sunny day, the background buzz of a few thousand fans milling and shouting (or hollerin', depending on where you are), a cold beer an a hot dog, the seventh inning stretch, pitching changes, about one second of excitement for every minute of game passed, but no clocks timing everything. Lazy, relaxed, fun. I remember going to Arlington Stadium to watch the (Texas) Rangers play back when Nolan Ryan was on the team and a seat in the outfield was under $10. They were bleachers. Long expanses of aluminum brought to somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 degrees by the summer sun of Dallas/Fort Worth. For someone wearing shorts (as I did pretty much every day of every summer) sitting down was an involved maneuver so that the backs of my thighs didn't end up blackened. Unless Nolan was pitching (those games were packed requiring advanced purchase and extra early arrival) we would arrive with plenty of time before the first pitch, and then spend all of that time walking from the car to the ticket office; we would get tickets go in and have our pick of the remaining seats (usually a lot). Then we would take out binoculars, open the cooler and ready gloves for the home runs that would, I was sure, come right to us.

Attending a ballgame today is nothing like that. Sure, it's similar, but it's similar in that way that you know something is wrong but just can't place it. I am going to see the Sox-Royals this Saturday. Tickets were $55 apiece--since the Sox won the World Series all the good seats at good games (for time or opponent) were bought out by crooked resellers. I'm hoping to go to some games during the week and pay face, which for the bleacher area is...$27. Monday nose-bleed seats are still a good deal at $7, and I'll probably do that if I am not going to entertain someone else. My real problem, and this goes for most "events" is the cost of food and beverage...

$7 for a beer! For a Bud?!? I am in no way a beer snob, but I can get a 12 pack of quality beer for ~$15. I can buy 30 cans of PBR for $12, High Life is a dollar more for the same. Hell, even if I did want to stoop to Bud I can still get a case for about $17. The beers you get at the ballpark are typically pints (that's 16 oz, for coversion from cans multiply by 3/4...so a case is 18 pints and my 30 packs are 21.5 pints) but that's still less than $1/beer. Since the grocery store can manage to turn a profit off of that and every penny over that is just extra cash for the hogs that means that beer at the ball park has more than 600% markup! That's more than wine at pricy restaurants! Relative markups for soda (pop, coke) are the same if not more...soda is cheeeeeeaap. Then the crux...do you remember when I said we brought a cooler to the games in Texas. Well, you can't do that almost anywhere anymore. Soft sided coolers are allowed at the Sox ballpark (no, I won't call it by name), but zero beverages/beverage containers are allowed. Thirsty: drink water from one of the fountains, or pay out the ass.

The only tennable solution is to kill off a six pack/person before going to the game, not so that you don't get anything to drink while there, but so that you don't mind the cost as much, because, ya know, it's baseball, and so "Hey, beerman!"