Tag Archives: Minnesota Twins

Shortened Games Lead Some MLB Teams to Stretch Beer Sales Past the Seventh Inning

Recently, several Major League Baseball teams announced that they would extend how long they sold alcohol in response to changes that have shortened the average time it takes to finish a game.

The Arizona Diamondbacks, Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee Brewers are among the teams who have announced that they will sell alcohol beyond the seventh inning.

Traditionally, teams declared last call on all alcohol sales after the seventh inning. The rationale for stopping beer sales in the seventh inning was to allow fans two innings to “sober up” before they headed to their cars after the game.

With the unforeseen circumstance of lost revenue due to shorter baseball games, some MLB teams are expanding the window in which alcohol can be served inside their ballparks.
Photo R. Anderson

However, the newly introduced pitch clock has dropped the average time of games by about 30 minutes to start the season leading to scenarios where the seventh inning is arriving earlier than it used to in many cases.

As a result, there is less time for teams to sell alcohol.

I never held any grand illusion that stopping beer sales in the seventh inning meant that there would be a decrease in the number of drunk fans leaving a Ballpark.

A 2011 study by the University of Minnesota determined that one in every 12 fans leaving a sporting event are above the legal limit when it comes to alcohol. That means in a stadium holding 40,000 people, 3,200 fans will likely be legally impaired by the time they leave.

To be fair, I know that most attendees of sporting events drink responsibly and use designated drivers. In fact, the above statistic breaks down to about eight percent of the total attendees. So, I am not painting all fans who drink with the same broad Clydesdale hair brush.

However, it only takes one of those individuals to make a bad decision and cost someone their life.

I often left Ballparks at the seventh inning stretch to ensure that I got ahead of the crowds leaving after the ninth inning.

Whether leaving early actually increased my odds of avoiding an encounter with a drunk driver or not, the practice usually made me feel like it did.

The entire premise of MLB teams ending beer sales in the seventh inning to give fans time to sober up falls flatter than a dropped keg when faced with the new approach of extending beer sales into later innings to allow teams to maintain their revenue streams.

Make no mistake, sporting events generate thousands of dollars of revenue from alcohol sales every game.

An example of how much revenue can be found in the trend of beer snakes. For those who may be unaware of what a beer snake is, it is comprised of empty beer cups extending from the bottom of a stadium section to the top. One of the teams that fully embraces the beer snake is the D.C. Defenders of the XFL.

For the sake of some quick journalist math, let us assume that with about two cups per inch, a hundred-foot beer snake would be comprised of around 2,400 cups.

Now, let us say that each of those 2,400 beer cups in the beer snake cost $12 when they were full.

That makes the cost of the beer snake to be $28,800 from head to tail.

Once we realize that not every beer sold in a stadium or ballpark becomes part of the snake, we are talking about some serious money.

The Sporting News estimated that MLB teams could make up to an average of $8 million on beer sales a season for their 81 home games. Multiply that by 30 teams and the amount of money teams are heading to the mountain with expands to a whopping $240 million for the league per year.
Graphic R. Anderson

The Sporting News took the alcohol sales math further and estimated that MLB teams could make up to an average of $8 million on beer sales a season for their 81 home games. Multiply that by 30 teams and the amount of money teams are heading to the mountain with expands to a whopping $240 million for the league per year.

Considering a 31 minute shorter game time thanks to the tinkering MLB did for the 2023 season, and the 30 teams could lose a little under $35 million in beer sales in total over the course of a season.

Proponents of extending the alcohol sales window will likely try to paint a human element on the issue by saying that longer sales mean that the vendors who provide alcohol to thirsty fans will not miss out on as many tips.

To that I say, many of the vendors at the games I have attended usually park blocks away from the Ballpark. By extending alcohol sales, vendors will now be faced with the prospect of having to walk further past more buzzed and/or drunk drivers leaving.

Proponents of extending the alcohol sales window will likely try to paint a human element on the issue by saying that longer sales mean that the vendors who provide alcohol to thirsty fans will not miss out on as many tips.
Photo R. Anderson

To be clear, I am not against responsible alcohol consumption inside Ballparks, or anywhere else for that matter.

What I am against, is when decisions that have real impacts on innocent people are made solely on a financial profit basis as appears to be the case with the MLB teams extending their alcohol sales.

The optics of extending beer sales beyond the seventh inning is profit over safety no matter how many team spokespeople try to spin it as a catering to fans approach.

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Matt Strahm weighed in on the issue of longer beer sales during an appearance on the Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast and provided some sobering insight.

“The reason we stopped it in the seventh before was to give our fans time to sober up and drive home safe, correct?” Strahm said. “So now with a faster pace game, and me just being a man of common sense, if the game is going to finish quicker, would we not move the beer sales back to the sixth inning to give our fans time to sober up and drive home?”

It used to be that common sense would say that the best approach was to be proactive and try to avoid a situation from happening versus reacting to it after the fact.

A bartender who overserves a patron is held responsible if that patron gets in a car and kills someone. It will only take one incident of a fan leaving a Ballpark and killing someone for the beer sales issue to be placed back on tap.

Someone who is going to overindulge at the Ballpark is going to do that whether alcohol sales end in the seventh inning or the ninth inning. So, at the end if the day, the percentage of drunk and unruly fans will likely not increase if teams continue to leave the bar open longer.

What will change is any goodwill MLB teams got by saying that they were halting beer sales early to allow fans time to sober up before hitting the road.

Those MLB teams don’t get to have it both ways. The optics are either, fan safety or profits.

With the rise in sports leagues cozying up to Sportsbooks, it is fair to say that MLB teams are gambling that extending beer sales closer to the time that fans leave will not lead to catastrophic events like drunk driving crashes, or fans falling over a railing in the Ballpark.

I certainly hope they are right and that the cash grab of later alcohol sales does not increase the occurrence of fan death and injury.

Then again, every gambler runs out of luck eventually.

Now if you’ll excuse me, doing all of this math has made me feel like I need to rest for a bit.

Copyright 2023 R. Anderson

Ryan Zimmerman Among Players to opt Out of Shortened MLB Season Amid Global COVID-19 Pandemic

Fresh off of earning a World Series ring with the Washington Nationals, Ryan Zimmerman, has said, thanks, but no thanks, to the idea of playing baseball during the 2020 MLB season of COVID-19 induced uncertainty.

In making his announcement Zimmerman said, “After a great deal of thought and given my family circumstances – three young children, including a newborn, and a mother at high risk – I have decided not to participate in the 2020 season. I cannot speak for anyone else, but given the unusual nature of the season, this is the best decision for me and my family.”

Zimmerman’s Nats teammate, pitcher Joe Ross, also announced that he will be opting out this year.

Fresh off of earning a World Series ring with the Washington Nationals, Ryan Zimmerman, has said, thanks, but no thanks, to the idea of playing baseball during the 2020 MLB season of COVID-19 induced uncertainty.
Photo R. Anderson

On the same day that Zimmerman and Ross, opted out, the Minnesota Twins announced that two of their coaches, Bob McClure and Bill Evers, would be excused for the 2020 season based on concerns about their health and the risks that playing baseball in the middle of a global pandemic could expose them to.

I applaud Zimmerman, Ross and the Twins for realizing that there is more at stake this year than trying to squeeze in 60 baseball game in 66 days. I have said it before, and I will say it again, the idea that the MLB is going forward with a plan to play baseball in the middle of a global health crisis is asinine.

With the number of cases of COVID-19 rising from coast to coast on a daily basis, the last thing we need is to have people traveling from place to place potentially spreading the virus.

I totally get that there are millions, if not billions, of dollars at stake if the MLB does not play ball this year. But, by them deciding to go forward with this plan they are potentially putting lives at stake just to stage a made for TV event.

Of course, with owners like Jim Crane, whose Houston Astros are literally located in one of the hottest of COVID-19 hot spots at the moment, saying that they need to sell beer and nachos to fans in order to make money, one can clearly see where the priorities sit for some people.

Nearly a third of the MLB teams are located in some of the areas that are experiencing hospital bed shortages, increased COVID-19 positivity rates, and rollbacks on business openings as they try to wrangle the COVID-19 monster that is spreading with reckless abandon like a water-soaked Gremlin.

At the time of this writing, the Toronto Blue Jays have not received permission to train and host games in their home Ballpark based on concerns of hosting 30 home games with teams from other areas that are not following the 14-day quarantine requirements for travel from the United States to Canada. In the event that games in Canada cannot be played, the Blue Jays would likely host games at their Spring Training Ballpark in Dunedin, FL.

In the event that games in Canada cannot be played, the Toronto Blue Jays would likely host games at their Spring Training Ballpark in Dunedin, FL. The Blue Jays shut down their spring training facility in early June after a player exhibited COVID-19 symptoms, demonstrating the pitfalls of trying to play ball in the middle of a COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo R. Anderson

The number of Canadian officials needing to give the green light for the Blue Jays to play ball should stand as a glaring reminder that there is a lot at stake, and a lot of risk that is needing to be accepted, in order to play baseball.

The proponents of getting to go to baseball games, packing their churches full of shoulder to shoulder parishioners, not wearing masks, and basically doing whatever they want to do, usually roll out the First Amendment of the US Constitution and tie it all together in a pretty bow of freedom of speech, religion and expression as their get out of jail free card to do whatever they want by calling it a hat trick of protections.

As a refresher for those who may have taken Government class many years ago and have forgotten the words of the First Amendment they state that, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In Journalism school, and throughout my career, I along with many of my fellow journalists, have clung to the First Amendment freedom of the press clause like Linus clung to his blanket. In fact, one year my high school newspaper staff t-shirt had the first amendment printed on the back of it to remind us of the great freedom we had.

Of course, just because you can do something, that doesn’t mean you should do something. As Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben was fond of saying, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

As part of that responsibility, in Journalism school we were also taught that there were potential limits to free speech insofar as they interfered with the freedoms and the rights of others. In particular, we could not knowingly libel or slander someone and call it protected speech merely by waving the First Amendment in their face.

This is where the calls form elected officials, along with public health officials, for responsible social distancing and use of face coverings come in.

Sure, as a society we could kick and scream and say that it is our God given inalienable right to not social distance and not wear a mask as the rest of the world laughs at how the United States failed to contain the virus because we had too many freedoms.

But the more God like, and for that matter the more American, behavior would be to protect ourselves and others by wearing a mask. COVID-19 doesn’t care who you voted for. COVID-19 doesn’t care if you lean to the right, lean to the left, or if you stand up straight in the middle.

Without a proclamation from state or federal government officials saying that MLB cannot gather to play ball in their particular jurisdiction, they are free to do so. The question then becomes, just because they can, it doesn’t mean they should. There is also the non-uniformity related to which Ballparks can have fans, and which ones cannot.

I miss baseball, but I am perfectly content to have the 2020 Season cancelled, and wait for a return to action in the spring of 2021. One of my first stops when baseball does return next spring will be Publix Field in Lakeland, FL.
Photo R. Anderson

I am still hopeful that between now and the scheduled first pitch on July 24th, the MLB season will be cancelled. MLB could make such a bold statement by telling their fans to stay home and wear a mask, by having its players staying home and wearing masks when they go out, instead of trying to put on the farce of what will amount to a shortened A Ball season.

One of the biggest mistakes that sports fans can make, and I was certainly guilty of it at times, is to elevate the players on the field to mythical god-like levels and see them only as players, and not people. When we do this, we fail to realize that every athlete is just a person like the rest of us. Granted, a person who can throw a ball a lot harder than most of us, but still just a person.

Athletes have families, and they have pursuits beyond just playing the game. Athletes, like the rest of us are also not immune to catching COVID-19, even if they adhere to over 100 pages of MLB guidance for how to play baseball in the middle of a pandemic that has, at the time of this writing, killed over 128,000 Americans.

Ryan Zimmerman, and any other players who decide to sit out the season, know what is important, so why shouldn’t they sit out the season? Sports careers are fleeting, and the greatest trait an athlete can possess is knowing that there is a life to be lived outside of the lines.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to see what classic baseball movie the MLB Network is airing tonight.

Copyright 2020 R. Anderson

A Trio of Meaty Baseball Stories to Sink Your Teeth into

One of local barbecue restaurants I frequent has a plate called the pork three ways. The plate consists of pork ribs, pulled pork and pork sausage.

I mention this fact, not to make people hungry for barbecue pork, but to point out that sometimes it is hard to pick a single entree. This indecision on a single item often leads to the need to combine things into a single meal.

In that same spirit, we are going to focus on three entrees from the world of baseball. Because, focusing on just one would not do justice to the other two, much in the same way that just getting ribs leaves out the pulled pork and sausage.

Our first entree comes to us from the Houston Astros who stepped on a player’s moment to create a look at us moment Monday.

For the first time in team history, a member of the Houston Astros won a batting title. That player was second baseman Jose Altuve. Not only did he have the best batting average in the American League, Altuve had the best overall average in all of baseball this season.

Jose Altuve won the American League batting title this year and had one day in the spotlight until the team announced it had hired a new manager. Photo R. Anderson
Jose Altuve won the American League batting title this year and had one day in the spotlight until the team announced it had hired a new manager.
Photo R. Anderson

Altuve also set a new team record for hits in a single season.

For a team that has known more about losing than winning the last couple of years, this individual achievement by Altuve gave fans of the Astros something to cheer about as another lackluster season came to a close.

Traditional wisdom would say that in a situation like this a team would give the spotlight to the player for a couple of days to give the proper attention to such a stellar achievement like having the best average in all of baseball.

Instead, the smoldering tire fire that is the Astros front office saw fit to take the attention away from Altuve less than 24-hour after the end of the season to announce that they had hired a new manager.

The Astros certainly needed to fill the vacancy at the manager position. However, was the news that they hired a man with a losing record as a manager, who has been out of the dugout for four years, so important that they could not wait a day or two to announce it? Apparently in their minds it was. So, thus ended the spotlight on Jose Altuve.

While the hiring of A.J. Hinch left many fans underwhelmed and thinking that the Astros should have hired a more established manager, the fact remains that more established managers have enough sense to stay away from the Astros in their current state.

As for the manager the Astros did get, Hinch managed the Arizona Diamondbacks from May 2009 until July 2010, and was fired after a 31-48 start. Hinch served as the vice president of professional scouting for the San Diego Padres from 2010 until this past August.

Not a very successful resume at first glance. I will wait to see what Hinch can do with his second opportunity to manage a big league club.

Speaking of managers, our second entree on our baseball three ways plate takes us to Minnesota where the Minnesota Twins fired longtime manager, Ron Gardenhire, after a fourth straight losing season.

While I do not follow the day to day operations of the Twins as closely as I used to, I have been a fan of Ron Gardenhire since his days as the manager of the Orlando Sun Rays of the Southern League.

Ron Gardenhire spent nearly 25 years in the Minnesota Twins organization including the last 13 as manager. Photo R. Anderson
Ron Gardenhire spent nearly 25 years in the Minnesota Twins organization including the last 13 as manager.
Photo R. Anderson

As mentioned before, I attended many Minor League Baseball games growing up in Orlando. Several of those years were spent pulling for Gardenhire led teams at Tinker Field.

All in all, Gardenhire spent around a quarter of a century within the Twins organization, including 13 seasons as manager. Gardenhire was there for much of the team’s success.

Unfortunately in a what have you done for me lately world, past success can only go so far in covering up current problems.

The Twins offered Gardenhire a front office position, which he declined, while stating that he feels that he still has things to offer as a manager.

Personally, I would not mind the Texas Rangers giving the reins to Gardenhire, if for no other reason than to say that he managed both teams that used to be known as the Washington Senators. The Twins leaving Washington D.C. for the twin cities paved the way for the expansion team version of the Senators that became the Rangers.

Even if Gardenhire does not end up with the Rangers, I have little doubt that he will end up in another dugout before too long.

Our third baseball entree to complete our plate takes us to Sugar Land, TX where the Skeeters are hosting the first two games of the Atlantic League Championship Series against the Lancaster Barnstormers.

The series opened up last night with the Skeeters losing to the Barnstormers 10 to 6. Game two of the series is tonight and will find the Skeeters trying to even the series.

Regardless of whether or not the Skeeters hoist the championship at the end of the year, they can be proud of what they accomplished this year.

Sugar Land Skeeters manager Gary Gaetti led his team to the playoffs for the second straight season. The Skeeters opened the Atlantic League Championship Series last night. Photo R. Anderson
Sugar Land Skeeters manager Gary Gaetti led his team to the playoffs for the second straight season. The Skeeters opened the Atlantic League Championship Series last night.
Photo R. Anderson

Among those accomplishments are hosting the All-Star Game in June, making the playoffs for the second straight year, and winning the first playoff series in team history against the York Revolution.

It is likely that the Skeeters will continue to build on their success next year during their fourth season of existence as they continue to form an identity

There you have it, three delicious entrees from the world of baseball this week served on a single platter.

As every good three meat plate needs a couple of side dishes, it should be mentioned that the Major League Baseball Playoffs kicked off last night with the American League Wild Card game between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland Athletics and continues tonight with the National League Wild Card game between the San Francisco Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Now if you’ll excuse me, all of this talk about entrees has made me a little hungry.

Copyright 2014 R. Anderson