Beer-Drunk Baseball: Decibel 69, July 2010

Though you’ll be reading this a couple months into our favorite season of the year (baseball), we’re writing it with giddy anticipation of our team’s home opener in Safeco Field. The quality of baseball we will enjoy from our upper deck seats on this holiest of days may not exactly be world class—the term “anemic offense” seems to be the best descriptor of the 2010 team—and definitely varies from year to year, yet the beer experience rarely disappoints. And, as you must all know, (good) beer makes everything better, at least for a little while.

We pity the poor saps who have to watch baseball at Coors Field in Denver, Busch Stadium in St. Louis and Miller Park in Milwaukee, however. Theirs is a beer experience guaranteed to be disappointing and predictable. See, when the naming rights to a ball park have been sold to a giant beer conglomerate, your selection will be rather limited and obvious, full of the usual bland suspects. Those poor suckers never stood a chance.

Yes, Safeco Field pours a lot of the same products—even in craft beer-soaked Seattle the majority of people still drink watery pale lager and the like, we’re chagrined to report—but without trying to sound all braggy, we’ve got two better-than-average breweries/brew pubs (Pyramid and Elysian) within spitting distance of the park and local brews and other craft beers are decently represented inside.

First pitch is 3:40 pm for the home opener, but ours is a schedule dictated largely by the beery goodness we will augment this celebration with. Getting properly lubricated before being subject to the brutal stadium prices is a necessity, if for no other reason so we can tolerate the inevitable playing of “Cotton Eye Joe” on the PA. We’re already putting together our pre-game lineup—lead off with a Manny’s Pale Ale or two at Hooverville (where the peanuts are free) and then follow that up with the powerful hop smack of Thunderhead IPA batting clean-up in the Pyramid beer garden—with the care and thought of a big league manager. Once inside, since there are plenty of taps pouring good craft beer throughout the stadium, we’re not afraid to go to the bench: i.e. the shortest available line.

While we approach this first home game with all the early-season optimism we can muster, we also realize that the results on the field, which we have no control over, may be disappointing. The delicious, refreshing beer we’ll be drinking, however, won’t let us down—whether it’s game 1 or 162—and that we have a say in.

Adem Tepedelen would like to formally apologize to the other occupants of section 331 on April 12, 2010, for his blatant disregard of most of Safeco Field’s Code of Conduct.