Cold Beer Here: My Summer as a Ballpark Beer Vendor

By Freddy Ono

After years of being a Toronto Blue Jays fan, frustrated by the increasing cost and scaled-back benefits of being a season ticket holder, in 2018 I decided to apply for a job at the stadium. Having worked in an office for years, would I even be able to handle working in customer service, dealing with potentially drunk and rowdy customers? Could I handle the physical strain of hauling a cooler full of beer up and down stairs for seven innings under the blazing sun? And most importantly, what the hell was I thinking? This is the story of a summer spent avoiding the cost of baseball season tickets, instead using a stadium job as an excuse to gain access to games for free. What started out as a joke, and a job I was sure I’d quit within two months, turned into a season of nerve-wracking, confusing, and hilarious experiences I didn’t want to leave. Along with my summer of vending, I interview other vendors from different eras and backgrounds, revealing the disparities and commonalities of our experiences selling cold beer to baseball fans, why we do it, what we learn from it, and why we love it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freddy Ono
• Release date: May 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777005351

Book preview

Cold Beer Here:

My Summer as a Ballpark Beer Vendor

Freddy Ono

Ghost Cats Publishing

Cold Beer Here: My Summer as a Ballpark Beer Vendor

By Freddy Ono

1st edition

E-book ISBN: 978-1-7770053-5-1

Cover art by: Freddy Ono

Edited by: Jack Derricourt

Copyright 2020 B.F.H. Clement

Printed in the United States of America

Worldwide English Language Digital Rights

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

While this is a work of non-fiction, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals involved.

Thanks to everyone who ever went to a ballgame with me, especially when they didn’t really want to.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by Lesley Mak

Prologue

Chapter One: Pre-season

Chapter Two: Spring Training

Chapter Three: Opening Day

Chapter Four: April

Chapter Five: May

Chapter Six: June

Chapter Seven: July

Chapter Eight: August

Chapter Nine: September

Interviews: Allan

Interviews: Maria

Interviews: Faisal

Interviews: Lorne

Interviews: Carlos

Post-season and Acknowledgments

DISCLAIMER

All events described in this book actually happened to me. I have not added to, exaggerated, or embellished anything for dramatic storytelling purposes. Names of anyone mentioned to have worked at the stadium have been changed, with the exception of public figures (such as any baseball players), and people mentioned by interview subjects in passing.

FOREWORD

By Lesley Mak

Anyone familiar with the Major League Baseball schedule can tell you this: the season is long, and it can be a slog. It is 162 games a year, between 5-7 games per week. Warmup, practice, play, cool down, answer questions from the media, rinse and repeat. That kind of routine can wear on a person’s body, brain, heart and spirit. Most fans know that for a baseball player, every pulled muscle, tweaked ligament, split fingernail or bruised heel could threaten their ability to perform. Most fans know that baseball players, especially pitchers, rely on a strict regimen around eating, sleeping, exercise and rest. Hell, even their number 1’s and number 2’s are intentionally plotted into their schedules.

Not many professional athletes can maintain that routine. Fans can barely handle the emotions of sitting on the hard plastic stadium seats, nerves shot, fearing that their hopes for glory will be dashed with each pitch, bragging rights rescinded with the final out. So what do you do when your stomach is growling but your feet are barking? Or your friend has great seats but refuses to let you pay them back for the ticket? Or your season ticket buddy is going through a bad breakup and you can’t leave them mid-story but also can’t listen to another painful detail without something cold and carbonated to dull the senses a little? What if you want any or all of those things but don’t want to peel your tired ass off the hard plastic stadium seat that is now perfectly harmonized with the temperature of said tired ass? Then you rely on the hardworking beverage, popcorn, candy, ice cream and peanut people who climb up and down the stairs lugging loads of liquids and licorice on their backs and on their heads to alleviate that physical need. That psychic need.

You may not pause to think about the interior life of the tattooed beer guy who just handed you an ice cold tallboy. Maybe you did and that thought was better you than me, bud, but now, from the comfort of your seat, you’ll get a glimpse into the interior life of Freddy the Beer Guy. Pitchers lose sleep over hot spots blooming into blisters, while Freddy worries about fresh tattoos bleeding all over his beer cooler. Players fuel up pregame with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or pasta slathered with mayonnaise in the clubhouse kitchen. Freddy packs high protein, low carb, clean snacks and mini-meals in his backpack for his shift.

While Freddy’s intense, regular fitness routine may not match that of Roy Halladay’s famous pre-sunrise run up and down the same 500 level stairs, it’s still a routine that ensures his body is in peak midseason condition to get you your beer. This is the story of a man who carries an ice cold, heavy load, so you don’t have to.

PROLOGUE

June 17, 2018. Drenched in sweat, I turned around after reaching the top of the thirty-five rows of the upper level (the 500 level) at Rogers Centre, formerly SkyDome, home of the Toronto Blue Jays, with a foam padded cooler bag full of twenty tall cans of beer and coolers hanging from my shoulder. I was glad I had sold some of them already, or else the climb up the steps would have been even more gruelling. I usually started off from the beer kitchen where we were resupplied with about thirty cans, having learned by this point in the season how best to pack them into the bag.

With a satisfied exhale, I took off my cap – a dark blue Blue Jays cap with STAFF embroidered across the back – and wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm. I’d never use my hand, or the rally towel I had in the bag. Those were for serving beer.

I sat for a moment on the large concrete support at the base of the pillar at the row’s peak, and admired the view of the entire field. My body was suffused with the momentary euphoria that comes with physical exertion. It was either that, or the heat-induced light-headedness. It was a sunny day, hot and humid, and many of the 35,000 fans in the building had taken refuge on the shady concourse. The Blue Jays were in the midst of a terrible season, not yet two years removed from their 2015 and 2016 playoff runs, and many other fans had decided they had better things to do with their summer weekends. Sitting in a concrete stadium, stewing in one’s own sweat in a plastic seat, and watching a losing baseball team wasn’t high on a lot of people’s lists. At the top of the row, there were only a handful of spectators scattered around the section, so I was able to take a break of about thirty seconds before someone walked over.

Hey buddy, what kinda beer you got in there? he asked.

Bud, Bud Light, Keith’s, Stella, Corona, Mill Street Organic, Eristoff vodka coolers and Bacardi Breezers, I replied mechanically. By this time the list of beers had become a mantra, a set of sounds I uttered without thinking, a spell by which I enchanted customers into inebriation at inflated stadium prices.

Shit, man. Lemme have a Bud!

What am I doing here?

For a split second, the same thought that had run through my brain dozens of times earlier in the season, returned. I had a real job at an office not far from the park that was more than sufficient for my monetary needs. I was over forty years old. I had worked service and food industry jobs before and hated them all. I had been a punk show promoter years before and couldn’t stand dealing with drunk people. I had won awards for films I made, and had written and published novels, and could have been working on a new one. I could have been hanging out with my friends at the beach, or practicing my mediocre softball skills, or just relaxing in a park and reading a book in the shade of a tree. So what was I thinking? Why the hell was I slinging cheap booze for high prices, potentially giving myself heat exhaustion and a sore back, for half the pay I made at my regular job?

Here you are sir. Enjoy the game! I said as I exchanged the now-opened beer for cash.

It was because I loved being there.

CHAPTER ONE: PRE-SEASON

In 2009, after about a year of living in Toronto, I had finally found decent, full-time employment close to my actual field, and wasn’t a cobbled together mess of multiple part-time jobs like I had subsisted on for my first six months in the city. While sitting at my desk in the office on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 21, a friend of mine texted me a message: Do you want to come to the Jays game tonight? I thought about it for a few minutes. I had never been before. I had never even thought of going. The stadium was like some, strange, forbidden temple, as mysterious to me as a country on the other side of the planet. I had been by it before, walked near it, but never had I visited it. How would I get there? How would I access it? How much would it cost? What even is baseball?!

The game started at 7PM. Work ended at 5, but with management’s pedantic insistence on everyone staying until the work is done, that really meant 5:30. It was an office in which everyone was afraid to be the first person to leave for the day. I’d need to get some dinner, which was easy enough, before heading over. It wouldn’t take long to ride from the office to the ballpark either. It was a dreary, overcast day, threatening rain, but I knew the stadium had a retractable roof. My friends had an extra ticket, which was nine dollars, and I was to meet them at Gate 14, near Front Street and Blue Jays Way. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no idea if I needed to be there early.

I bicycled up and my friends were waiting for me with ticket in hand. I was only a few minutes after 7, but my friends seemed antsy. I realized I should have been earlier. Everything was a blur of anxious confusion for me. As we made our way up the ramps to our seats high above the field, I became aware of the enormity of the building. When I finally saw the gigantic electronic scoreboard, the Astroturf field, and the thousands of fans all around me, I was momentarily stunned. Light and colour and noise burst out all around me. I barely understood the game. What was that guy doing to the left of second base? Which one was the shortstop? Who were all these players I had never heard of?

I hadn’t watched a Toronto Blue Jays game since 1993, when with much of the rest of Canada, I was enthralled by the spectacle of that year’s juggernaut of a team steamrolling through the season and winning the World Series. I had sporadically seen Japanese baseball on television while I lived in Japan for a year, and even wandered around the Big Egg, also known as the Tokyo Dome, where the Yomiuri Giants played. Unfortunately, I was young and easily intimidated and never bothered to actually attend a game. Now here I was at a Major League Baseball game, in the very city I now lived in, and for only an inexpensive ticket.

But who was Lyle Overbay? Was that a real name? What was happening? Who was this guy Brett Cecil pitching? Why was this dude named José Bautista batting ninth? The end result was a low-scoring loss, but I was fascinated. After the game, I knew I needed to research this esoteric world I had briefly glimpsed.

After re-educating myself on the basics of the game I had totally forgotten, I made it out to a few more games that year, learning more each time. During the off-season, a friend told me about a deal that sounded too good to be true, one that he had been taking advantage of ever since it was implemented: the Blue Jays sold $100 passes that would guarantee entry to eighty of their eighty-one home games (the exception being the always sold-out Home Opener), with best available seats in the 500 level. I called in to their ticket office, and sure enough, I was able to purchase two Toronto Star Passes (as they were then sponsored by the newspaper). In 2010 I went to dozens of games, always taking a friend. I became borderline obsessive, reading about player trades, and going over obscure rules like how an unassisted triple play might be turned. Appropriately, 2010 was the year José Bautista became a household name with his surge in home runs (and popularity), and with it, a renewed level of notoriety for the team.

For the next several years I kept renewing the passes, which became known as Season Passes, and then Ballpark Passes, each year using them to take my friends to the park. When 2015 rolled around, the Blue Jays had made trades for players the likes of Josh Donaldson who might finally propel them to the playoffs again. When they dealt mid-season for David Price and Troy Tulowitzki, again becoming an unstoppable colossus, the Ballpark Passes were as good as Wonka’s Golden Ticket.

Unfortunately, with sold-out stadiums, they no longer needed the inexpensive Passes to help fill out the stands, and they were discontinued after 2015. I opted for the far more expensive season ticket package for 2016, which with a playoff team, made it easy to sell my unused tickets and find friends to bring to games. I became familiar with some of the staff, occasionally saying hello to the beer vendors who recognized me. It was around this time, watching them give their sales pitches, hauling cases of beer up and down the stairs, that I had the tiniest inkling in my mind that I could probably do what they were doing. I told myself I was being ridiculous, crazy. I had a job already! I shrugged off the momentary fantasy and went back to watching baseball and hanging out with my friends.

In 2017, I again renewed my season tickets, but this time shared two seats with my friend Michael. I had known him for two years, and he was a bigger sports fanatic than I was. It was more difficult logistically, trading off games we weren’t able to attend, or giving each other tickets so either he or I could take different friends. Unfortunately, the team’s fortunes went into a nosedive mid-season, attendance started to drop off, and it was sometimes impossible to even give our unused tickets away when neither of us was able to make it to the games. Friday nights were our softball nights, and we were never able to use our Friday night tickets. I started to realize the economic infeasibility of maintaining expensive season tickets of which I was only able to use half of my share.

Sitting in the stands that year with Michael, often joking about the ridiculous nature of the games we watched, my thoughts would again drift to what it would be like to be a beer vendor. Michael and I regularly chatted with Allan, one of the beer vendors who would come in to our section, because our season ticket seats were directly beside the section entrance and he would immediately see us before launching into his sales routine. He’d start the game by imploring the crowd to buy alcohol from him because he had four kids to feed. Each time he returned, he’d have more kids. By the third inning, it would be five kids to feed. By the fifth inning, six kids to feed, and so on.

Allan, of course, was single with no children. I learned later that he was a stand-up comic and actor who just liked trying out absurd material on the crowd to get a reaction. One of his regular questions to the crowd was, Who wants nutritious alcohol? Humour drew attention, and he reasoned, the attention of anyone who wanted beer. I had many friends in common with Allan, and it turned out I had met him before while he was dressed and in character as Batman for cosplay purposes. He was a strapping man with rugged looks, and he often rolled his sleeves up to his shoulders as he sold beer. Others had radically different tactics. Some of the vendors I saw would simply say, Cold ones here! or, Beer and coolers, with little enthusiasm. One woman vendor I saw often in my section would simply walk to the bottom of the steps and lean back against the railing high over the field and silently hold up beer cans. Once when bringing my friend Ryan to a game, he mentioned that he knew one of the vendors and would introduce me if he came into our section. Faisal, as the vendor was named, was also moonlighting. His regular daytime work was as an actor.

When Faisal did arrive next to us at the section entrance, I was immediately able to see why he was in theatre and film. He was tall, thickly bearded, imposing, but friendly, and with a deep, dignified-sounding voice. He looked statuesque, even in his vendor uniform.

Beer? he said in a Middle Eastern accent, as he looked around. Everyone OK here for beer? He pointed at people. You OK? Beer? Anyone need a beer? It was less a vociferous sales pitch and more a low-key status check.

After establishing that no one was buying, Ryan got Faisal’s attention and he came over to chat. I talked with him for a minute about filmmaking, shook his hand, and then Faisal was on his way. They weren’t able to take breaks per se, but chatting with fans was acceptable as long as vendors focused on selling more beer. That was two beer vendors then that I was on an acquaintance basis with. Allan even found and added me on social media. Still, the ludicrous idea of me becoming a beer vendor seemed as improbable as taking on the mantle of Ace, the Blue Jays mascot. I might as well have thought about donning the giant bird costume and dancing on top of the dugouts to encourage the fans to cheer harder.

I wonder how hard that would be? I started to muse out loud while sitting with Michael at games. How much do you think they get paid? I wonder how long they have to work. I thought it would be hilarious just to try it out for a bit for the free baseball and then quit. How hard could it be to come up with some funny things to say to the crowd and get them to buy beer? I imagined myself wearing one of the bright orange shirts, a beer can held aloft over my head, shouting, Getcha beeya heeya! in a voice like a 1930s newspaperman. At the very least, I wanted to know more about this strange, shadowy world into which I had never peered. What was behind the curtain? A man pulling levers to make the Great and Powerful Oz talk?

Speaking of men behind curtains projecting a booming voice, by this time the Blue Jays in-game P.A. announcer, Tim, had learned about my sci-fi writing via social media and bought (and enjoyed) my first novel. I and some friends contacted him when we were at a game in 2017 and I offered him a copy of the sequel, which he gladly accepted. He was on a friendly basis with many of my Jays-fan friends through social media, and he paid us a visit as we watched batting practice. So now I knew multiple people behind the scenes of the stadium: beer vendors, the P.A. announcer, even some of the friendlier ushers. Was there really some chance I could find my way into this world? I pushed it to the back of my mind as a silly whim. The seed, though, had been planted in my fertile imagination, and once it started to grow, proved difficult to dislodge.

After the long season was over, it gnawed at me. The idea of working at the stadium, and being paid to be there rather than paying far more for that privilege, was something I was unable to ignore. I no longer wanted to renew my season tickets, since as I had learned over the 2017 season, the benefits were negligible, or useless to me. The dedicated gate entrance for season ticket holders, for example, was on the opposite side of the stadium and on an entirely different level compared to where my seats were. The allotment of tickets we were allowed to move to different games was drastically reduced, and this was one of the main selling features of the season ticket package for me. Discounts, fan events, and perks had been rolled back, and prices had been increased.