beer here

Last night I went to Fenway Park and saw the Red Sox pummel the Tigers 8-2. In many ways a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Fenway Park has become an expensive place to watch a game. I understand the new Yankee Stadium is now extraordinarily pricey and may have surpassed Fenway in that regard. In recent years, the cost of a "blue" grandstand ticket at Fenway was 40 dollars. This charge for the opportunity to sit in a seat built for a 1912 sized person, too narrow for many 2009 sized waists and with insufficient legroom for 2009 sized adults. Still the place is packed with people paying 40 dollars and up.

Used to this cost, I was surprised to find that my seats were only 28 dollars a piece. Then I realized why. The seats were in one of two non alcoholic sections in the park. That is, one could not drink beer and sit in our seats. This was not a problem for me, but apparently is a factor that renders these sections less desirable. In essence, one pays a 12 dollar surcharge to be able to buy 8 dollar beers at the Park.

In the Madness of March I refer to the remarkable beer consumption in Las Vegas during the course of the first four days of the tournament. I enjoy a beverage now and again myself, but the amount of beer guzzled in Las Vegas was--in both meanings of the word--staggering.

Of course the problem with beer--and with betting--occurs when one can not stop. One of my earliest recollections of going to a baseball game as a very young boy, was watching and hearing the vendors walk through the stands shouting, "Beer here. Beer here." At Fenway and at many sporting events beer is here, there, and everywhere. For all sporting events, betting opportunities are similarly omnipresent. You know that you are having a good time with sport when you can, if you'd like to, abstain.