Archive for Beer

The name on Young Ryan Theriot’s fake ID reads, “Fraternity Paddle Made Man.”

“Are you the quarterback?” Angel Boudreux once asked Young Ryan Theriot. No, I play baseball, Young Ryan Theriot started to say. But he stopped himself. “Yes, I am the quarterback,” Young Ryan Theriot uttered instead. “I am the quarterback of your panties.” This simple statement of unassailable fact is now carved into courthouse edifices all over Louisiana.

Every time Young Ryan Theriot makes a band geek cry — usually by frog-punching him until he voluntarily climbs into the dumpster outside the cafeteria — his Eddie Bauer rugby grows a new stripe.

If Young Ryan Theriot isn’t under the bra by the fourth track of Better Than Ezra’s “Deluxe” LP, then Young Ryan Theriot knows he needs to try something different.

Young Ryan Theriot is not most alive when playing baseball. No, Young Ryan Theriot is most alive when he’s at the wheel of his Bronco II with a Bud Light freshly shoved into his Señor Frog’s coozie and doing donuts in some poindexter’s front yard.

Young Ryan Theriot derives momentary uplift from chucking his empties onto the stretch of highway that, in the service of avoiding double-secret probation, pledges have been volunteered to clean up for the remainder of history.

Young Ryan Theriot’s buddies know better than to mention that night on South Padre. If they do, he’ll frog the shit out of them.

At the outset of any party, Young Ryan Theriot picks out the exact patch of drywall that he will later punch when Melissa Arsenault’s Catholic boundaries prove stronger than his rituals of dirty suasion.

Every five weeks or so, Young Ryan Theriot goes to the Regis Salon at the mall. Once there, Young Ryan Theriot surveys the stylist’s rack, slackens himself into the chair and says, “Make me look like conformity veneered with trouble.” She does. She does because he is.

(HT: Our boy Kyle)

The Hillsboro team in Oregon needed a team name. They were in Oregon, a “proud agricultural” state that produced the second-most hops in America — it was obvious. The Hillsboro Hops will begin play in 2013 with a fancy new logo and an open question at the mascot position. Cheers to them!

Maybe this will open the door for:

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Depending on your goals, Dodger Stadium is either a boom or a bust from a beer perspective.

If you are looking to alter your experience through the use of a society-approved liquid drug, then the stadium is ready to provide. Their prices and sizes are very pocket-friendly: you can get a 24-ounce ‘tall boy’ domestic draft beer for $10.25, which is better value than most stadiums provide. These are large beers for a good price.

If your aim is to drink the best-tasting beer that you might want to drink while facing the pitch, well then Chavez Ravine might have the worst beer selection in the bigs.

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Brawlin’ Bartender.

Dayn Perry did a all-drinkers team, and I’ve done an all-ugly team, but there’s one team in between the two that deserves mention. It’s the cast of characters on the beer-league baseball team that make up the Best Bar in Baseball.

Walk in the front door, and the first person you’ll notice is Jon Rauch. That’s because he’s both the bartender at this mythical bar, as well as the tallest, meanest-looking tatted biker type you might find in baseball. He’s the tallest person in the major leagues, but he’ll more likely be proud of a lesser-known stat: he’s the tallest person to hit a major league home run and it came off of Roger Clemens. He’s not a man of a ton of words, though, so you’ll order your Lagavulin neat or your Old Rasputin Nitro (of course this bar has good whiskey and craft beers, why wouldn’t it) and look for a seat at the bar.

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Mike Krukow: Seabiscuit likes beer, I didn’t know that.
Duane Kuiper: The guys in the truck say it’s obvious: Cain is a horse.
Mike Krukow: That was… ah.
Duane Kuiper: [laughs]
Mike Krukow: Ahh. I love here.
Duane Kuiper: What are you talking about, that could be one of our kids out there.

This was presented in complete reverence for the broadcasting team, for Matt Cain, and for the San Francisco Giants.

I left New York for California in the summer of 2010, and though New York City is the best city I’ve ever lived in (compared to Negril, Hamburg, Atlanta, Mountain City (population 2500ish), Vero Beach, Boston, Palo Alto, San Francisco, London, Jersey City, and Menlo Park in that order), I don’t rue the move too terribly. Weather is only part of the reason — Beer figures in greatly too.

11 of the top 50 craft breweries (by volume) were in California last year, and if you pushed it out to 100, you might see even more of a share for this great state. San Diego seems to pump out a new craft brew prospect with upside every year. It was named the best beer city in America by Esquire last year. And home brewing is rampant here, where the weather is ideal for ales, and more people have garages with space for all the trappings.

So maybe it’s no surprise that three of the four California ballparks I’ve visited — AT&T and PetCo parks in particular — blow Citi Field’s beer selection out of the water. It may not even be the fault of the planners, it may just be a fact of geography.

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Felix Cortez Reyes Sarris was born yesterday afternoon. Now all eight-pounds-plus of him is barreling towards a career squaring the barrel or barreling the best.

Or not, of course. Whichever sport he plays or doesn’t play is going to be fine by me. A name like Felix puts him on a list with many notable baseball players, but it’ll also give him something in common with a revered economist.

But you know the trite-and-true saying:

“Give a man three baseball names and and a baseball in his left hand, and he’s probably headed towards being a LOOGY at worst.”

Today’s billet-doux pairs for us, the made-love-to readers, base-and-ball squads with representative cans and bottles of wholesome, nutritious alcohol. In some cases (pun!), of course, there’s room for Lincoln-Douglas debate as to the fitness of the union, but an abundance of right-wise American vigor is found in the effort. Please click and admire both girth and artifice:

It is pleasing to me, the Bonapartist scribe, that my preferred team, Cardinaux de Saint-Louis, is paired with my preferred existential lubricant, the stout.

In the end, though, this changes nothing …

Last night I was drinking in a bar in Chicago, mostly because drinking in a bar in Chicago is what sustains me and allows me to suffer existence. So I was drinking a selection of German lagers when I saw this hanging above the bar:

I am aware that the photo is sideways. I have the skills and even the will to right things in this regard, but the awry-ness of it suggests a certain absurdity and even a soft defiance of a kind. So it shall stand.

Pictured above, I am told, is “the owner’s brother.”

The owner’s brother is not a man who uses “high tea” as a verb. He is not a man at all; lo, he is a damn man. There are damn men who smoke while fishing. The owner’s brother is not such a damn man. There are damn men who fish while smoking. The owner’s brother is indeed such a damn man.

He probably favored that shirt because it lets the guns breathe a bit on a summer day. He’s probably not sure that the Cubs really are America’s team. He’s entirely sure that he’s about to take a piss off the boat slip.

Owner’s brother, let’s you and I make it through another day.

(Gratitude most righteous to Noel for his beery companionship and flash photography)

“Nama biru” is Japanese for “draft beer.”

Go to Jingu Stadium in Tokyo for a game — it’ll cost you half as much as the Tokyo Dome, and you’ll get to see the same game.

You know what will stick with you? The little things. You see, they have baseball in Tokyo, but they don’t call it that. They call it basebaru. Same thing, but a little different. Maybe it’s the metric system, or maybe it’s just society.

The beer experience fits right in — baseball with a little dash of shoyu.

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