Phillies reliever Matt Strahm joined the Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast this week and discussed an issue that is impacting ballparks across baseball: the timing of beer sales.
The longstanding policy across baseball had previously been that beer sales would be halted after the seventh inning. The idea behind that policy was obvious—to give fans time to sober up before traveling home from the game.
However, with new pace-of-play policies leading to quicker games, some teams have elected to alter their stadium beer policies and now serve alcohol through the eighth inning instead. The Brewers, Rangers and Diamondbacks are among teams who have changed their alcohol policy.
Strahm doesn’t think the moves make too much sense if safety is still at the forefront of the thinking.
“The reason we stopped hitting the seventh before was to give our fans time to sober up and drive home safe, correct?” Strahm asked. “So now with a faster-paced game, and me just being a man of common sense, if the game is going to finish quicker, would we not move the beer sales back to the sixth inning to give our fans time to sober up? Instead, we’re going to the eighth, and now you’re putting our fans and our family at risk driving home with people who have just drank beers 22 minutes ago.
“I’m not surprised. When you mess with billionaires’ dollars, to find a way to make their dollars back. My thing is, when you’re looking at the safety of your fans, that’s probably not the smartest decision to extend it into the eighth. And again, just being a common sense thinker, I think as a fan of the game, and just looking out for people, it would make more sense to stop the sales in the sixth.”
Strahm’s thinking makes sense, but as long as teams are allowed to make their own decisions on a stadium-by-stadium basis, there won’t be any consistency in the rules.
