Guest Post
In the afternoon came the mist, and a timid February breeze carried the mist at an angle below the metal roof and it landed on our laps and bled through the denim and we were cold now, watching 22 grown men stretch and kick a ball on the wet grass. I was thinking about how to smuggle whiskey into the next match.
“Maybe we should buy some barnoculars,” I said to the young man.
“Maybe. Do you want a beer?” he said. “The game is about to start.”
“I buy the beers. You save your money,” I said.
“I have a job now, Dad. A career. Let me buy you a beer.”
“You’re a fine boy. Thank you.”
After spending the first season in club seats, we moved into the north end because it’s hard to justify $200 a ticket when the food is roughly school cafeteria quality and unlimited beer isn’t really on my diet. Right away, we noticed the atmosphere and the banter was significantly better.
“You skipped leg day!” a guy in front of us shouted at a Cincinnati player.
Anyway, we were now on a beer-to-beer basis. Together they were $26. I was thinking then of the care one should take with a $13 beer. We had barely gotten into them when the first goal was scored by Cecilio Dominguez, who remarkably did not injure himself and did not roll about the sod, despite the certain exertion and physical risk the act of sticking out a foot at the back post involved.
We screamed and high-fived.
At the far end of the pitch, in the south stand where they “live among the trees,” I noticed a commotion. A broad cheer rang out. The crowd in the steep bank of seats erupted in joy among green smoke and a fair few of them took their beers and hurled them in the air. This, as is the case with so many things, reminded me of a song.
The song is “Perfectly Good Guitar,” by John Hiatt, which you might know if you are of a certain age and listened to KGSR when it was good.
It breaks my heart to see those stars
Smashing a perfectly good guitar.
I don’t know who, they think they are
Smashing a perfectly good guitar.
I could be exaggerating. It happens now and then. But my recollection is that a good 15 to 20 beers went flying after the first goal. Multiply that times 5 (one for each goal) and that’s 75 to 100 beers at $10 to $13 each. Rough math here, but we are talking about $750 to $1,300 in beer that ended up on someone’s clothes rather than in the buyer’s mouth.
This really raises the question: Who can afford such a habit? What is the demography of a group of people who routinely throw away what is undoubtedly one of the most expensive beers any of us have ever purchased? I am a member of Los Verdes – definitely on the older end of the membership roster at age 55. My impression has always been that the group is (on the whole) fairly young – maybe 30 to 35 on average. I don’t know people my age who throw expensive beer.
“Do people your age throw beer?” I asked the young man.
“I’ve never really thought about it,” he said.
“Do me a favor. Think about it.”
“Well, I guess so … why are you obsessed with this?”
“Have you ever thrown a beer at a sporting event?”
“Dad, let it go.”
So I am working on letting it go. But I haven’t.
For Our Goals. You Throw Beer. As You Must. No Question. Are you Verde or Not?