Oot and Aboot: Craft Beer Night at the Ballpark

(Note: Author is not Canadian; rather, he prefers the quaint mispronunciations depicted in the blog post title.)

Friday night is a low ebb for me. After the rigors of a work week, I can find the energy for only a very small amount of coordinated activity.

Plans with other adults, where I have to interact in meaningful dialogue? Uh, no. That’s not really going to work.

There are a few excursions, however, that I can summon up the mental fortitude for. One of them is a trip to the ballpark. I am blessed enough to live just 15 minutes from the home stadium of a AAA baseball team, the Syracuse Chiefs (soon to be the Syracuse Mets, at which point I am sure they will be afflicted by boils, locusts, hot fire, and other various Biblical plagues).

In an attempt to drum up attendance, in a park that consistently has lots of leg and elbow room available, a number of promotional events have been added to the schedule.  New in 2018 is…

CRAFT BEER NIGHT.

Oh, yeah, that’s right.

For $20, the buyer, in this case myself, is awarded a 200 level ticket to the ballgame and two beers from a selection of 16 oz. delights, all served courtesy of a fine local tavern called Now & Later.

While the tavern itself has a dozen or so beers on tap, and several dozen more in cans and bottles, they bring a subset of these to the ballpark to be sold to thirsty baseball fans such as myself.

These beers do normally go for $10 a throw, so, essentially, the Friday ticket to the game is free with the promise of drinking two craft beers.

I CAN TOTALLY DO THAT.

(I suppose you could also look at it as the purchase of a $12 ticket to the game, and then two $10 brews discounted to just $4 each, but, somehow, in my brain, the concept of a free ticket to the game makes more sense).

I chose to partake, first, in this juicy IPA, so juicy, in fact, that the word “juicy” appears multiple times on the can.

My second choice was a Gose, the only Gose that I saw on the menu, this little number which touts itself as being derived from grapes.

These were both good, but not great, beer choices.  They got the job done, is what I’m saying.  I won’t delve into all of the subtle details of these particular beers because, quite honestly, they weren’t quite memorable enough for me to feel the need to do that.  They were cold, and beery, and alcoholy, and went particularly well with the hot dog and deep-fried-cornbread-stuffed-with-jalapeno-cheese-and-bacon things that were also consumed that night.

Sadly, the home team couldn’t muster all that much offense, giving up four runs before we found our seats and ultimately losing 5-0.

Given all of the goodness I was soaking in, though, I didn’t mind that either, particularly.

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