Baseball N. Beers Would Be Ashamed

A visit from the Wizard of Gore usually means good times: pilfered box wine, interminable cookouts, and citrus fruit affixed to apartment walls by means of cutlery. This time, however, it proved to be a somewhat more relaxed weekend. I’m certain Halfz will make some mention of the more salient episodes in due time.

I am claiming only one event as my own to relate, and it transpired on Saturday evening at the Nats-Marlins game. First off, I should mention that this was my first experience with RFK Stadium, and aside from the generally depressing state of the structure itself it was not a terrible place to watch a baseball game. That being said, I was horrified by the spectacle we witnessed during the fourth inning, after moving from our ticketed seats in section 521 of the upper deck (along the third base line) to a less crowded one in left centerfield.

Occupying perhaps five rows of the section adjacent, conspicuously drunk and emitting the kind of noise one might associate most immediately with a fraternity pledge event, was a gaggle of NoVa assholes. Despite being virtually buried under an avalanche of spent beer bottles, they had just managed – how it was yet unclear – to finagle a beer salesmen into leaving an entire case of his product at their feet.

As Halfz, WoG, and I looked on in horror, not only were the contents of this bin emptied; the process was repeated – twice – before beer sales were cut off in the seventh inning. This is to say that having already consumed perhaps 75 beers among the fifteen of them, the ringleader of this human tragedy thought it wise to spend over $200, on what amounted to about $25 (even at exorbitant Adams Morgan prices) worth of Bud Light. Never mind that case #2 wasn’t even gone before case #3 (only nine bottles this time) arrived. Never mind also that by the sixth inning, the leader of the troupe was so drunk that he accidentally poured half of his beer into his hand in lieu of the sunflower seeds he was holding in the very same hand. His error caught, he resumed pouring the seeds into his mouth four ounces at a time and spitting them – at times, simply pouring them directly – onto his friends’ heads.

Every section worth its salt has a cheerleader – usually an intoxicated fat person – who becomes the self-appointed originator of countless failed attempts at “the wave.” Ours was no exception: several rows below our disgusting, drunken friends, sat one of the fattest people I have ever seen in my life. And as though his four hundred pounds of weight and BAC in the 0.5% range weren’t dangerous enough – we could easily imagine him simply rolling out of the stands at any moment – this person occupied himself between his stints as wavemaster sucking down full flavor cigarettes. Halfz began to wonder how in the world he might sleep at night, considering there was no way his feet could comfortably touch the mattress as long as his oak cask of a gut was in the way.

As fascinating as it was to watch college-age hooligans pay perhaps $400 for beer over the course of two hours, the game itself was painfully slow. In fact, our departure at the seventh inning stretch came nearly three hours after we had arrived, during the bottom of the first. While I learned later that the Nats held on to win, I can remember virtually nothing of interest happening during the game, aside from the bases-clearing double Vinny Castilla hit in the first to tie the game at three apiece.