Yours for Good Fermentables ™: Baseball soon, but no good beer

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Baseball soon, but no good beer

I'm a baseball nut!

With football season concluded, I'm seeing more and more articles on the Washington Nationals baseball team in the sports pages. And with all the snow on the ground, it's warming to note that spring training will soon begin.

But I'm also - obviously - a beer nut.

So why is it that the Nationals won't consider putting craft beer and local beer into RFK, the team's home stadium?

As a Territory Manager for Clipper City Brewing Company, I, of course, have a vested interest in this. But as a baseball and good beer fan, I have an enjoyment interest.

More bizarre is that at both RFK and at Camden Yards, perhaps 40 miles away from RFK - but in really the same beer buying market - the concessionaire is the same company - Aramark.

And at Camden Yards, Aramark has had, since almost that ballpark's beginnings, several stands offering local beers. These stands, last season, poured in excess of 200 kegs per month. I would think that that would be a powerful FINANCIAL demonstration to Aramark and the Lerners - the owners of the Nationals - of the large subset of good-beer-fans found among baseball fans.

If it were only Clipper City and I being frozen out, that would be one thing. But Old Dominion, for goodness sake, a northern Virginia brewery (and the closest thing to a DC brewery we have now that contract-brewed Heurich is no more) is also sold at Camden Yards (along with Clipper City, Wild Goose, and others).

Washington Post beer columnist Greg Kitsock wrote about this lack-of-good-beer issue last year.

None of us local breweries can ante up the big bucks that the big brewers do for promotional stuff and signage. But the Lerners have emphasized the FAN EXPERIENCE from their very first press conference.

Well here we are!

I have been rebuffed in my attempts to interest the food and beverage concessionaire - Aramark - to reconsider. If you're reading this and you think you can help, please