Idiots Write About Sports

After the chair-throwing comes the meddling — the on-rush of pundits armed with well-meaning-but-ultimately-idiotic proposals to make sure that situations like the one involving felonious Rangers pitcher Frank Francisco “never happen again.” (Suggestion: maybe suspend the guy longer than 15 games. Just sayin’.)

The grand marshal in this particular parade of upright citizens is ESPN’s Jayson Stark, who offers his solutions for making sure that there’ll be peace in the ballpark. Naturally, his suggestions largely center on ramping up security to make sure that fans don’t get out of line. Because, as we all know, fans are always to blame, even when it’s players bull-rushing the stands and tossing chairs. Why, if only the fans had used their telekinetic powers to block the chair, this all could have been avoided.

A key element of the Stark plan is to further curtail beer sales. (Wait a minute… Oakland officials say that alcohol wasn’t a factor in the Francisco incid… oh God, my head hurts.) Jayson writes:

Allow no beer vendors in sections that are adjacent to fan-accessible bullpens, so fans would have to physically get out of their seats and walk to a concession stand.

That’s an interesting idea. Of course, I’ve gone to an average of 20 A’s games a season for the past four years, and I can’t remember seeing in-seat beer sales at any point during that time. As of a matter fact, I’ve gone to a bunch of ballgames throughout California — and I have never seen a beer vendor roaming the stands. From PacBell Park to Angels Stadium, when I’ve wanted a beer, I’ve had to go and fetch it my damn self.

That seems a little bit too much of a coincidence to have the five Major League Baseball teams in California not offer anything in the way of in-stand beer concessions (at least, in so far as my experience is concerned). Did somebody pass a law or something?

Well, actually, they did — at least according to Dan Hoyle, who in additional to being a freelance writer is also a ballpark vendor. Here’s what he wrote in Sports Illustrated a few months back:

Vendors in California, my home state, lost beer in 1987, when the California Highway Patrol pushed through legislation banning in-seat beer sales. Vending incomes and internecine bleacher violence levels on the left coast have never been the same.

My work schedule this morning prevents further research on this matter. I’m going to assume that since vending is Hoyle’s livelihood, he likely knows what he’s talking about — certainly more than Jayson Stark or I shoudl pretend to.

So congratulations, Jayson. The Oakland Coliseum has already enacated your bold proposal to ban in-seat beer sales — 14 years ago.

Seriously, would it kill someone on ESPN’s payroll to do actually do anything approaching research? I’m the laziest man in a five-county area, and it took me a five-second Google search to figure out that maybe banning in-stand beer sales would have precious little impact on California fan behavior since it’s already been banned.

Stark’s second-suggestion vis-a-vis beer is actually rooted in fact — a pleasant change for him — but, if enacted, it would ruin the ballpark experience for many fans. Thus spake the Stark:

And impose a one-beer-per-customer limit on both concession-stand sales and on fans walking back down the aisle to their seats in those sections.

This is one of those ideas that seems perfectly reasonable until you scratch the surface to reveal its inner idiocy and fan-unfriendliness.

I don’t doubt that there are people who stand in line to buy themselves multiple beers, lest an inning go by where they are not sucking down a magical mixture of hops and barley. (Again, I’m pretty sure that most stadiums I’ve been to limit beer sales to two per customer, whereas Stark seems to imply that you can buy as many beers as you can balance on your person at ballparks across the land.) But most of the people in line to buy two beers that I know about — and this group includes me — are buying one for themselves and one for a friend or loved one back in the stands. Often times, I’ll go to the ballpark with a pal and the two of us will split up our concession-buying activities — he will go get the dogs at one of the main windows, where they serve nasty, watered-down beer, and I will get us drinks at one of the specialty beer stands, where they serve the good stuff. Or, during the game itself, one of us might go to fetch the beers while the other remains in the seat to watch the game. That reduces the amount of time we might otherwise spend in line, giving us more time to enjoy the baseball game that brought us to the stadium in the first place.

If Stark is successful in imposing his police state, what you’ll get is longer lines at the concession stand. Longer, slower-moving lines (gotta check those I.D.s, you know) means grumpier fans. Angrier fans are more likely to say impolite things to strangers, seatmates and, yes, even ballplayers. And so you wind up with a even more hostile crowd, only now it’s fueled on rage instead of Budweiser. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a slightly tipsy mob over an openly enraged one — the former is easier to subdue.

And all this to stamp out a problem that wasn’t even caused by alcohol in the first place. Well done, Jayson Stark. Your powers of analysis are wasted on baseball — you should be at the Pentagon, crafting defense policy.

[Update: When I first read Jayson Stark’s two-point plan for ballpark peace, I was left with the impression that his second proposal was to limit beer sales to one at a time per person. I still think that. But as my wife pointed out, the sentence is so ambiguously constructed that it could be read to suggest that Stark thinks there should be a one beer-per-person limit for the entire game. If that’s what he’s suggesting — and again, I don’t think that it is — that’s even more insane. How you going to enforce that brainstorm? Wristbands? Chaperones? Breathalyzer tests next to the garlic fries stand?]

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