“I’m not into knee-jerk reactions,” the Rays’ manager told WEEI.com. “If somebody had all of these wonderful thoughts prior to this happening I may be more on board with it, or more empathetic to it. But all of this knee-jerk stuff that occurs in our game absolutely drives me crazy. If you want to be proactive about some thoughts, go ahead be proactive and I’m all for that. But to say a grown-up can’t have a beer after a game? Give me a break. That is, I’m going to use the word, ‘asinine,’ because it is. Let’s bring the Volstead Act back, OK. Let’s go right back to prohibition and start legislating everything all over again. All that stuff pretty much annoys me, as you can tell.”
Maddon, whose team is one of 13 in Major League Baseball to allow beer in the clubhouse, said that players at the big league level should be allowed to regulate themselves in regard to such activities as the use of beer in the clubhouse.
“I don’t understand any of that. Do we sell beer in the ballpark? These people who attend the games have a much greater chance of becoming drunk by the time they leave than a baseball player does,” he said. “Most of the time if you have a beer after the game, it’s one, maybe two, and that’s it. I have a glass of wine. I defend there’s not a thing wrong with that. If they want to start pulling beers out of clubhouses they better start pulling them out of ballparks, too, because that’s a higher percentage chance of something going awry.
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1. Joe Kehoskie Posted: October 27, 2011 at 11:10 AM (#3976731)Well said, Joe Maddon. Well said.
Exactly. But that is never going to happen, which is why the whole "think of the children" ######## is just ########.
Well said. I feel like the extra wild card falls into this category too. And interleague play. And, whatever stupid realignment scheme they're trying to move forward with. But, they'll drag their f***ing feet on instant replay and cry about tradition.
I am so tired of these oh-so rational and clear-thinking baseball insiders like Chris Truby and Joe Maddon sucking all the air out of the occasional MLB dumbfests -- quick, someone ask TLR his opinion to even things out.
...and let me also add
NNNEEEEERRRRDDDDD!!!!
When asked for comment, LaRussa responded, "what? let me slee... oh, it's green."
He probably just watched that Ken Burns Prohibition documentary.
No doubt while sipping on his pinot noir -- NNNEERRRDDDD!
Both alcohol and PBS should be banned from the clubhouse.
Send that swill down to A-ball where it belongs.
Wheee, look at me, I"m Peter Pantsless."
But I thought all the best decisions are made rashly as a response to a crisis, which enables you to show that you're a decisive leader who's not afraid of the tough issues.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get ready to watch tonight's World Series game in St. Louis because this time it counts.
Dammit, there aren't many times that being a middle school history teacher puts you at the front of the line, but being able to drop the term "Volstead Act" in correct context is one of my life's little joys... a joy that has now been usurped by Joe Maddon, who quite obviously has a cooler job than me and a working knowledge of the 18th Amendment.
So, Joe, on behalf of history teachers everywhere, you can have Prohibition as long as you promise to take Shields out before he gives up the 3-run bomb in the 8th with 114 pitches already thrown.
Take your shoes off in the aero-port. Empty your bottles and take off your shirt.
It's a knee-jerk life for you. It's a knee-jerk life for me.
If MLB implements a new policy, blame the Red Sox for ruining a harmless activity for everybody else.
Candid photo of a ballplayer addressing a sportswriter after the game in the spacious new Yankee Stadium clubhouse.
I would have been much more impressed if he'd dropped a sarcastic line about Izzy and Moe.
I bet he got it from Boardwalk Empire. He's a big enough fan that he once tweeted about how great his Sunday was, watching his team win and then being able to settle in for the season premiere.
Amen. The thing with instant replay is, you just know that there will be another Don Denkinger call sometime, that will cost a team a championship (or cost a team based in the Northeast anything at all), and that will result in a huge kneejerk passage of instant replay that will be horrifically planned out and will result in all of the umpires leaving the field six times a game for every nitpicky little call. So why can't they just be forward thinking and institute it in a reasonable manner before that happens?
I bet he got it from Boardwalk Empire. He's a big enough fan that he once tweeted about how great his Sunday was, watching his team win and then being able to settle in for the season premiere.
That's awesome. Joe Maddon is awesome.
Season 1 was only pretty good, but so far Season 2 has been awesome. I think my favorite characters are the New York mobsters: Rothstein, Lansky, Lucciano, etc. But Richard Harrow owns every scene he is in.
Happy Halloween.
There is a segment of society that has always been there trying to create perfection, perfect people, a perfect society. They try to convince you we should not accept the flaws of man. They believe that when something goes wrong in society, they need to jump into action and fix the flaw. They will never go away, we just have to beat them back.
I did that but they kicked me out.
Gretchen Mol does a pretty good job with her creepy character too.
I work at a public university now, and I assure you there is no alcohol in the building – at least any more; tales of afternoon boozing 50 years ago are still legendary. There's no bar on campus, and you can't buy liquor at the faculty club. But there are occasional receptions for the purpose of celebrating something or other, and wine of variable quality can appear. I pounded a Pinot after a 5pm class just a couple of weeks ago.
There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that; it's much like the office Shredder describes, or the situation Maddon describes, for that matter. Even if we had a reception every afternoon (and I bet you could find two or three a week at a university the size of ours, if you pressed the matter), what harm? I am an extremely moderate drinker, but like Maddon I'm going to have my nightly glass of wine at home anyway. The Lackey/Lester/Beckett situation seems more like professors hitting the sauce as soon as they got out of class at 11am, while other professors are fixing to teach in the middle of the beer and chicken party. Seems to me you could just keep the beer locked up till the final out; after that, I'm totally with Maddon on this one.
Clearly you were not in a flying squadron. We had a beer fridge in the ready room, and the second the last sortie of the day touched down, the beers were cracked.
Heck, I know grad students who claim that as little as twenty years ago people brought bottles of wine for the whole class to lectures. Nowadays some professors get uppity if I bring coffee.
About 15 years ago, we had to give a presentation in German class, and I chose "How to make a Black Russian" as my topic. The joke was that I didn't think the class understood, so I made and drank three of them before the teacher stopped me. There was enough vodka and Kahlua left that somebody got some paper cups and everybody who wanted one had a drink while the next guy did his presentation. The teacher did make us promise not to tell anybody about it. It was an undergrad class, and at least half the students (there were about eight people in the class) weren't 21.
And she has a helluva right hook. Granted, her opponent was a sextaugennarian stroke victim...
I must have imagined a similar furor in 2007 when Josh Hancock died and a bunch of teams banned alcohol in the clubhouse. Oh, wait Hancock came up with the Sox so continue to blame them for paving the way for a rule that will have no impact on your life ever.
Now, Maddon is rightfully annoyed and I'm sure resents that the Sox' side of his team's playoff race getting all the attention and possibly leading to an asinine rule.
Yes, because exercising control over the behaviors of your employees while they're on duty and in uniform is totally the same thing as exercising control over the behaviors of private citizens who paid to attend an event at a publicly-funded facility.
The stupidity, it burns!
And in 2006, when Oakland pulled alcohol out of their clubhouse after Esteban Loaiza got arrested for drunk driving.
I'm fairly certain that the availability (or lack thereof) of alcohol in the clubhouse will not affect you, or I or any other Primate in any way whatsoever, despite the numerous threads devoted to the subject. Now if Joe Maddon and other big-league boozehounds want to sound off, they should by all means go for it.
The reason that Torre gave for considering the ban on beer was that "We're supposed to be role models for youngsters." I'm sure that filling the stadium with beer ads, actually *naming* two stadiums after beer companies, and selling beer throughout the stadium, has a bigger influence on children than allowing players to drink in the clubhouse, a practice few people even knew about until a couple of weeks ago.
Three, unless you want to quibble with Busch.
Speaking of that stadium, what exactly was 'Pro Player'? What did that company do?
[edit: The Jays' home field was dry http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1092322/index.htm ]
It probably does, and if you want to try and convince them to stop doing all that stuff, too, then good luck and godspeed. It's not something that bothers me all that much, but to each his own, I guess.
The bottom line is that it's their company, not yours, and they can run it the way they want. If you're greatly outraged that they won't let their employees drink on the job anymore, then spend your money on hockey games or movies or whatever, instead. Vote with your wallet.
Sports apparel
I don't really get this sentiment. Is it just supposed to shut down any critical discussion of anything? No one should complain about anything?
If you're greatly outraged that teams pocket revenue sharing money instead of trying to win then spend your money on hockey games or movies or whatever, instead. Vote with your wallet.
If you're greatly outraged that they employ TJ Simers, then spend your money on USA Today or movies or whatever, instead. Vote with your wallet.
If you're greatly outraged that they want to put spiderman on the bases then spend your money on hockey games or movies or whatever, instead. Vote with your wallet.
Aren't there two sides discussing what MLB should do on this topic? It isn't like the "let'em drink" crowd is the only one talking about this subject.
Not to mention that it also aided your digestion and cleaned your teeth. It was truly a miracle product.
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Red Sox player.
When I was a paralegal about 14 years ago, after the end of the day the boss would sometimes crack open a bottle of wine and folks would partake. Wine wasn't really my thing so I didn't partake, and I would have felt weird bringing a sixer of Hamms and cracking it open.
In any event any work place that becomes anything of a social gathering spot after work is likely going to have alcohol. A baseball clubhouse seems to be such a place for many. Maybe Maddon feels the team is better off if it spends a little more time together socially, and beer in the clubhouse facilitates that.
But it has yet to turn a consumer into a giant blueberry, which knocks it down a peg in my estimation.
It doesn't bother me at all, but neither does the beer in the clubhouse. I'd expect people who are being hysterical about the latter to at least have some concerns about the former.
The bottom line is that it's their company, not yours, and they can run it the way they want. If you're greatly outraged that they won't let their employees drink on the job anymore, then spend your money on hockey games or movies or whatever, instead. Vote with your wallet.
Well, it's their company, but there's obviously disagreement within management (after all, Maddon is part of management) about this policy. Are we not allowed to have a conversation about it?
Three, unless you want to quibble with Busch.
Yeah, I wasn't counting Busch, since I figured people would quibble if I did.
Serious question - why wouldn't you count Busch?
Because I think it's technically named after Gussie Busch (the previous stadium was Busch Memorial Stadium), and not a corporate naming right like Coors or Miller.
It was meant to be useful advice, in case people felt like doing something more than kvetching.
Which, I guess, they don't.
Among all of the conceivable things that MLB does that could spark a consumer protest movement, denying Ben Zobrist a Corona after the game is about 9,000th on the list, but, uh, thanks for the advice I guess.
Well, that's certainly how I feel about it, but given all the RAW RAW FIGHT THE POWAH being voiced in these drinking threads, I figured I was maybe in the minority on that.
i don't think there's been a bigger turnaround in the rules about drinking in the workplace than there's been in the newspaper business in the last 30 yrs. at my first paper, we were upstairs from a restaurant/bar. any time you wanted to, you could go downstairs and have a drink. at the daily i worked on, oldtimers told me that people were actually keeping bottles in their desk and drinking from them, just like you'd see in the old movies. people would be loaded at their desk. by the time i left the daily, i think bringing liquor to work was a firing offense. the only time we could have a drink in the office was once a year when there was a holiday party for sources and other friends of the paper, and it was closely watched and shut down after a couple of hours.
at the paper i work for now, there is never any alchohol on premises.
And as of right now, the majority of them have decided that there shouldn't be any beer in the clubhouse. So what's the problem?
Alcohol (and alcoholism) is pretty common in architectural firms. Seventy hours a week for no money'll do that to you.
We are the 4.2-6.1% ABV!
But the solution being floated would cover both, at least with regard to the areas MLB can reasonably control.
Furthermore, in the specific Red Sox case, the players involved were "on the job" but they weren't actually working in the sense that they were doing anything. They were being paid to be there and little else. Their actual work on those days takes place before the games. That doesn't excuse the behavior; I'd certainly put a stop to it for the exact reason it became a problem: it looks bad. But it's not close to the same thing as a drunken first baseman trying to catch a throw.
If you ban drinking in the clubhouse after the game, there's no reason to believe that drinking after the game will stop or even decrease. It will just move to a new location. That might be good for MLB's liability but little else.
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