Calgarians Robyn Alford (left) and Susan McLeod savour the wares of the Vancouver Island Brewery while taking in a Victoria Seals game last Saturday

Brews of Summer

Baseball and beer just seem to go together

Baseball just cries out for beer: those lazy summer afternoons, the lingering seventh inning stretch, and that most enduring of diamond traditions—the incessant heckling.

This summer marks the inaugural season for the Victoria Seals baseball franchise in the Golden Baseball League, bringing some much-needed life to Victoria’s Royal Athletic Park and relief to fans who’ve been without high-calibre play for several years. And as Monday observed from the grandstand at last weekend’s game, plenty in the crowd were making repeat visits to the beer window as the Seals tried to close the gap against the Calgary Vipers.

We recently spoke to Seals president Darren Parker about his team’s baseball-beer connection.

Rather than grab the first corporate deal to come walking through the gates, Parker and the Seals enlisted Vancouver Island Brewery to provide the suds to keep fans satiated.

“There’s obviously the big players in the market—the Molsons and Labatts—but you know, baseball’s such a grassroots sport that you want to be involved with people who are grassroots marketing it,” says Parker. “And why wouldn’t you? Obviously they’ve got fantastic beer. I can attest to that. I’ve sampled a lot of it. If I get to run a basball team damn it, I’m going to watch the games and drink beer.”

Parker isn’t the only one whose been sampling the stock. Although his front office was still crunching the sales figures for the first month, he says fans have been drinking it up.

“It’s been flying, partly because we’ve had such nice weather as well, and an opening home stand,” he says. “I think the opening night they were pretty much out at the end of the game, which is a nice problem to have.”

Of course, at $6 a can, enjoying more than a few ballpark bevvies can start to take its toll on the wallet. But Evans says that’s just the price of an evening’s entertainment.

“You go to some of these other places and you’re talking $7, $8, $9 a beer,” says Parker. “So I still think we’re at the lower end of the spectrum as far as sporting beer costs. You’re running a business so you want to have a number that’s not terrifying the public, but also that’s reasonable when you factor in all your other operating expenses. Concessions and food and beverage are a pretty important component to just staying in the black and being profitable.”

Parker says the decision to go with cans and bottles rather than kegs at the concession came down to dollars and cents.

“The thing about baseball is that if the lines in the system aren’t perfect, on a hot day, you wind up getting a lot of waste from foam from the lines heating up,” he says. Parker adds that beer would also be wasted when the team hit the highway for a series of road games and the kegs left behind to grow stale.

With the Seals finally starting to find their scoring groove, and summer stretched out before us, there’s still plenty of time to grab a seat in the stands, an ice-cold brew and celebrate baseball’s return to the Garden City. M