Play Ball

We headed south to watch baseball. To commune with fifteen thousand sports fans, enjoying the warm climate and cold beers. To cheer for the hometown team, and root for quality play. To sit outside in the sun and watch a bunch of men hit a ball with a stick. To squirm and continuously reposition our collective buttocks on immeasurably hard plastic and aluminum seats.

That last one wasn’t really our intention, just an unintended consequence of the field conditions. Towards the end of the day, I’d be getting up every half inning to recirculate, and then sit down with another dollar beer. That’s right. Ball park beers – for a dollar. Five Bolivars, actually, but close enough to a buck, especially considering the eight to ten dollar beers at any professional stadium here. They weren’t huge, though – probably ten ounces – but that made for most all of them being served well cold and fully carbonated.


Plus, you could get them past the seventh inning. In fact, one evening, the game required a tenth, and you could still get beers. Or, if you didn’t feel like another beer, you could get a bottle of whiskey delivered to your seat, which sure beats trying to sneak it in past the AK-47 wielding, riot helmet wearing, carbon fiber cup snuggling (I made that one up (I hope)) national guardsmen at the gate.

True that. They sold a number of whiskeys, some recognizable, some not so much, like the very popular “Something Special” which, surprisingly, is a Seagram product. Anyway, for about 200 Bolivars, staff would transfer the contents into a fresh 750 milliliter plastic bottle, fill the decorative box with ice, and deliver both, along with a few plastic ice-filled cups, to your seat. From that point, the neat-rocks-mixed choice was yours, as was the choice to get stupid drunk a la American Sports Fans, which no one did.

Sadly, not every spectator could get booze delivered, only those in the upper deck and VIP seating (generally between the bases). They also got better concessions, but only if you believe “better” means tasty chicken breast sandwich vice tasty steaming pile of grilled tripe.

Mmmm,… organs.

The baseball wasn’t bad, either. Essentially, the Caribbean Series pits the champion teams from each of the national leagues of Venezuela, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico (actually, a territorial league) in a double round robin tournament. Each ticket bought you use of one seat for both afternoon and evening games, after which you had seen all four teams play. As expected, the Dominican Republic crushed, Venezuela was embarrassed, Puerto Rico was poorly supported, and the Mexicans got quite loud (one of their fans brought his sousaphone).

Overall, it felt like Double A ball. But there’s something to be said for Double A ball played out of doors, in 85 degree weather, with dollar beers, in February.