I think Washington Nationals President Stan Kasten hates his fans.
He's one of the suits who's turned Major League Baseball's gift to the Nation's Capital into a pathetic place-holder of a franchise: a bottom-feeder that will twist in the wind until it's time to move into a pretty new waterfront stadium.
Yet as Kasten and the Nationals' management pinch their pennies while a cheap knock-off of a professional baseball team is eliminated from the pennant race by the end of May, have those season-ticket prices dropped as dramatically as the Nationals have in the standings? Of course not. Washington's baseball fans are paying big-league prices to watch expansion-level pitching.
Like I said, I think Kasten hates his fans; but I didn't think he'd be apathetic as to whether they live or die.
How else can one rationalize the hypocrisy of the Nationals banning alcoholic beverages from their RFK Stadium clubhouses, yet selling them to fans every few feet on every level of the stadium?
Washington banned the booze on Tuesday as an (over)reaction to the drinking-and-driving death of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock last month. Said Kasten to the Washington Post, "I don't think it's a good place for us to be providing alcohol to people right before they get into cars and drive away."
What a double-standard. I mean, this is a franchise that offers something called "The Miller Lite Beer Pen" for fans to rent for parties. If this decision was truly born out of concern for drinking and driving after the ballgame, then just ban it all, from the clubhouse to the upper deck.
Booze is everywhere in these stadiums, from the readily available hooch around the ballpark to the alcoholic advertisements found around the stadium. The difference, of course, is that sales to fans and ads in the stadium generate more money than a shortstop taking a longneck out of a fridge. Perhaps if the players were paying for their own beverages at stadium-level prices, the financial hit would have been too great for this decision to be made.
It's true that the Nationals and other MLB teams have restrictions on fans purchasing alcohol at the game. Like, for example, the two-at-a-time rule for beer purchases, or the limits placed on how many beverages can be purchased throughout the game by the same fan — as if Aramark employees have some kind of face recognition capability, like a Terminator robot.
There are also restrictions on how late into the game alcoholic beverages can be sold. But if the concern is that people will drink "right before they get into cars," it doesn't matter if you stop selling beer after the seventh inning; if your team stinks as badly as the Nats do, chances are fans are leaving before the cut-off anyway.
Then there are those arenas and stadiums that offer their high-rollers with the chance to purchase top-shelf liquor in special "Winner's Clubs" or "Champion's Lounges" after the game. I guess the assumption is that if you own season tickets to a professional sport and have access to these clubs, you must also employ your own designated driver.
Look, I'm no teetotaler; in fact, I'm a booze-hound, attempting to hold up the great traditions of sportswriters through the ages. I wrote "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer" with years of research, a rapier wit, and about two dozen bottles of Irish whiskey. I believe fans should have as much a right to have a beer at the game as a professional athlete has to drink one after the game. In both cases, any prohibition of these libations is just going to force us to the nearest local watering hole, where we will drink and be merry "right before we get into cars."
That is, according to Nationals reliever Ray King in the Washington Post, what happened to Hancock: he left the clubhouse, went to a bar, and then tragically died on the road.
For every fan or player that can drink responsibly, there is going to be one that can't. Accidents will happen. People will die.
I respect the right of Kasten or any MLB official to not want blood on their hands; as the Nationals president told the Post, "We haven't had any incidents, and we think everyone will continue to act responsibly. Nevertheless, I didn't feel comfortable being the one providing the alcohol in those situations."
But it's a slippery slope, Stan. You're not the one providing alcohol to players anymore. But who's providing it to the thousands of fans paying to see them? The concessionaires? Their employees? How does one reconcile such politically correct concern for his players while allowing and encouraging that same behavior amongst the paying customers?
I think Major League Baseball has just opened Pandora's Cooler.
Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book is "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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