Beer and Baseball: Great American Pastimes

For many years, baseball has been a constant companion. Our friendship dates back to when I was six and--stop me if you've heard this before--my father took me to see a game at Yankee Stadium. After what seemed like an endless journey up stairs and ramps and back down some more stairs, we found our seats. Beer in hand, Dad reverently pointed down to center field. There stood his idol, Mickey Mantle...

That was 1957. During the Fifties in the New York area, baseball was still king and there was no better place for fans to discuss it than at their corner taverns. These were no-frills establishments: the decor was limited to breweriana (which would be worth a small fortune today), a black-and-white television with a rabbit-ears antenna, and maybe a shuffleboard table or two.

Sometimes Dad would take me to his neighborhood local (who could afford babysitters back then?) where he held court. Then came the day when I was officially admitted to the charmed circle. During a heated discussion of the upcoming World Series, a friend of Dad's turned to me and uttered the magic words, "Well Paulie, what do you think?"

My real rite of passage into manhood--actually getting to drink beer--was still some years off. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait as long as many Americans. In those days, the legal drinking age in New York was 18. I went through another important change then. By the time I became legal, I'd shifted my loyalty to the Mets. You see, I'd been raised by a strict National League mother.

As often as I could, I hopped a bus, then a train, then the famous number 7 subway to Shea Stadium. A highlight of the day was pulling out two singles and flagging down the beer man, who came over and poured me a Schaefer. Or was it a Rheingold? Both of those beers, along with Ballantine and Piels, sponsored the local teams at one time or another. Joining the Road Team

That's how my beer traveling began, with quick trips "into the city." But by that time, the urge to travel had long been in my blood. When I was small, Dad moonlighted at an Esso station and sometimes brought home road maps. My favorite map outlined a vast fantasy world called "Central and Western States," which I hoped to explore for myself one day.

That day had to wait until after college, when I finally had enough money to care for and feed a car and to pay my travel expenses, which included the single guy's four basic food groups: truck stop coffee, hamburgers, salty snacks, and (of course) beer. Summer trips between my new home in Michigan and my old one in New Jersey turned into excuses to see the ballparks in between. Just as medieval astrologers consulted their celestial charts, I pored over my road atlas and baseball schedule while mapping out my routes.

My first ballpark road trips took place in the Seventies, which were strange times for both beer and baseball. The economics of the brewing industry--which required breweries to advertise and distribute on a national scale--were a death sentence for the local breweries whose names were still associated with baseball. One by one they closed their doors. Strange things were happening inside the parks, too. Basically, not everyone knew when to say when. At Tiger Stadium, my semi-official summer hangout, Friday was fight night in the bleachers. Things got so bad that the Tigers closed down the bleachers after beer-soaked fans interfered with the action on the field.

Ballpark travel gave me a final chance to try some local brews before they vanished. To be honest, they tasted much the same as the beers I knew well, but they were still exotic because I'd never had them before. In Philadelphia, college friends introduced me to Schmidt's, "the Beer for the Bicentennial." Which is not to be confused with Schmidt beer, which I drank outside Metropolitan Stadium before a Twins game. The cans, which featured native wildlife, were more memorable than the beer itself. In Baltimore, the local brew was "Natty Bo"--National Bohemian. Some years later, I encountered another local beer inside Memorial Stadium. It was called Bird Beer. Strangely, I have yet to find a Baltimore Oriole fan who remembers it.

A Quest is Born

It was during one of those Michigan-to-New Jersey road trips that my ballpark travel became an Arthurian quest. The magic moment occurred during what was up to then a dreary evening in Cleveland Municipal's Stadium. Then a foul ball almost literally bounced into my cup of beer. I took the ball's appearance as a sign, much like that message that Kevin Costner saw on the Fenway Park scoreboard in Field of Dreams. It inspired me to go out and see a game in every major league ballpark. (By the way, the ball still occupies a place of honor on my desk, next to a bottle of Flying Dog Ale autographed by Ralph Steadman.)

At the same my ballpark travels took me even farther afield, my beer horizons widened as well. During a Memorial Day trip to San Diego, I stumbled upon a hole in-the-wall deli that not only made tailgate-quality sandwiches for Jack Murphy Stadium but also held a treasure trove of imported beer. Stocked with hundreds of brands, the shelves were more fun than any toy store I roamed through as a kid. All that weekend I stocked up on beers, icing them down in my motel room. After the game, I enjoyed a self-tutored tasting of Czech lagers, English bitters, and Japanese dry beers, as well as the really weird stuff--which included something called EKU 28, which I pronounced "undrinkable." My palate was in serious need of further education. In due time, that would come.

Toronto was one step in the right direction. At the time, the Blue Jays were an awful team, and they played in one of the ugliest parks in the majors. But the city itself more than made up for that. Its pubs introduced me to Molson Stock Ale, Brador, and John Labatt's Extra Stock. After coming home from Canada, I started making regular beer runs--or should I say ale runs--over the border. In San Francisco that same year, I discovered brewpubs, an institution that wouldn't become legal in my home state for some years to come. What fascinated me were the customers who showed up with growlers. The last time I'd seen someone carry home freshly-poured beer was on a long-ago Sunday in New Jersey, when local blue laws limited off-sales to cardboard containers called "leakers," which were given that nickname for good reason.

Another West Coast trip, this time to Seattle to see the Mariners play in the Kingdome, turned me into an honest-to-goodness beer traveler. Before I left, I'd gotten the skinny on Northwest microbrews from friends. What they didn't tell me was that F.X. McRory's Steak, Chop and Oyster House was hosting a mini-beer festival featuring regional micros. I sampled ales from Portland Brewing, Deschutes, and Red Hook, while hop aromas and visions of my next western trip danced in my head.

Shining Diamonds

The folks in charge of Major League Baseball have come in for plenty of criticism lately, but thing they've gotten right is ballpark design. One by one, the ugly concrete donuts, where baseball played second fiddle to the NFL, have been replaced by real ballparks. The new parks offer the best of both worlds: the charm and quirkiness of classics like Ebbets Field, coupled with the latest in creature comforts. And in these new parks, brawling fans are almost as rare as .400 hitters. Baseball made another smart move by locating the parks downtown. That classic phrase from Field of Dreams, "build it and they will come," also applies to watering holes near the ballpark--that is, if they weren't already there. Every serious fan knows about Murphy's Bleachers, the Cubby Bear, Goose Island Wrigleyville, and dozens of other bars surrounding Chicago's Wrigley Field. And no baseball trip—or any other kind of trip--to Denver is complete without a sweep through the bars and brewpubs surrounding Coors Field.

There are plenty of places to explore in other major league cities.

• Within walking distance of the Blue Jays' new home, you'll find two of Ontario's best beer bars--Smokeless Joe's and Esplanade Biermarkt--as well as the Steam Whistle Brewing Company, which offers tours of its "Laverne and Shirley"-era facility.
• The neighborhood around Fenway Park welcomes fans with plenty of beery haunts. My favorite is the Boston Beer Works, located across the street from the entrance to the ballpark. It was there that a long-suffering fan told me over a glass of Hercules Strong Ale, "The only reason the Sox don't lose today is that it will hurt more if they lose tomorrow."
• Houston's Minute Maid Park is within walking distance of the Flying Saucer Beer Emporium and the bars and clubs of a downtown district that's coming back to life.
• Across the Ohio River from Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark is the Hofbräuhaus, a scaled down and ever-so-slightly-Americanized version of the world's most famous beer hall, but with the same beers as those poured in Munich. Walking there on the blue bridge spanning the river is part of the charm of the experience.
• Across the street from Safeco Field, Seattle's new, state-of-the-art ballpark, you'll find the Pyramid Brewery. From there, it's a short jaunt to Pioneer Square and beyond that, F.X. McRory's, Pioneer Square, and beyond that, the alehouses of downtown and Belltown.

Micros Make the Big Leagues

Over the years, much has changed inside the ballparks as well. In fact, we're coming full circle to the days when fans drank the local products at the game. The trend started in (where else?) the West, where concessionaires discovered that regional food and drink added pizzazz to a menu that had gone stale. In addition to standard ballpark fare, you'll find barbecue, clam chowder, and--don't knock 'em if you haven't tried 'em--fish tacos.

And microbrewed beer. It, too, has broken into the lineup, thanks to changing consumer tastes--and a nudge from the federal government, which challenged Anheuser-Busch's dominance of the tap handles. In recent years, I've also found Great Lakes Brewing beers in Cleveland's Jacobs Field, Penn Brewing's products at Pittsburgh's PNC Park (along with cult favorites Iron City and Rolling Rock), a stand selling Maryland-brewed beer at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and, of course, the brewed-on-premises Sandlot beers at Coors Field.

Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park, which opened two seasons ago, might offer a glimpse into the future of ballpark beer. While the park was in the planning stages, the Phillies' management involved fans in its design. One result of their input was several "Brewerytown" stands that pour beers from area micros. Will this trend spread to other ballparks? I certainly intend to find out.

Running All the Bases

Which brings me back to my quest to see all the ballparks. I've whittled my must-see list down to four. Topping the list AT&T Park in San Francisco. I still haven't been to the Anchor Brewery or Toronado, it's time for a return visit to Jupiter and the Triple Rock Ale House, and the breweries of Wine Country await beyond that. There's also Petco Park in San Diego. Pizza Port and Stone Brewing are nearby, and I've circled September 22 on my calendar: there's a downtown beer festival that evening, and the Padres are home that weekend.

Heading back east, there's the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis, the home of the new Schlafly Brewery and the old Anheuser-Busch brewery. The route from Motown to the Gateway Arch passes a dozen or so breweries, and Chicago is a short and inviting detour. Finally, there's RFK Stadium, the temporary home of the Washington Nationals. If I don't find enough "hop spots" in the nation's capital, Baltimore isn't far away. And on the way back I can visit... Hey, wait a minute. I just got an idea for a road trip. Could you excuse me for a moment? I need to dig out my maps and rummage through my beer library.

See you at the ballpark!

Feature article, All About Beer magazine, Volume 27, No. 3, July 2006.