The St. Louis Cardinals take beer out of their locker room in the wake of the recent death of pitcher Josh Hancock...a locker room build inside BUSCH Stadium...an ediface that honors, salutes, hails, memorializes and pours beer. Barrels of it.
Baseball and beer go together. Take it from someone who just spent the afternoon at Miller Park...MILLER, that is, named after the brewery that sits just down the street from the stadium.
It's the home of the Brewers, who are named after those who make beer. It's filled with taps and bottles and glasses and cups all brimming with the stuff, not to mention signage that encourages you to drink more of it.
And, I don't see anything wrong with that.
Beer is made for adults, and adults make choices. Some are better than others. My choice this very afternoon was Diet Pepsi, since I drove.
Josh Hancock made a bad one. A fatal one. A choice that thankfully, didn't take anyone else's life.
He did the bulk of his drinking his last night in a bar, after the game. Most of today's athletes opt for protein shakes and the weight room after the final out. Hancock opted for 12 ounce free-weights across the street.
Banning beer in clubhouses may make management feel good, by sending a sign to fans that, damn it all anyway, we're serious about our players drinking. To accomplish that, we'll treat grown men like children.
The truth is, they probably do it for liability reasons--they don't want to get sued if an employee gets crocked on premises and slams into a family of six on the way home from the park.
Clubs should extend to players the same courtesy they do their fans: you make the choice, and you're trusted to make the responsible one. If baseball was truly serious about distancing itself from alcohol, it would roll the barrels out, replace the taps with milk cartons and take the brewery names off the cornerstone.
That won't happen. And, it shouldn't.
Treat fans like adults. Players, too.
Josh Hancock got a wake-up call three days before the crash that claimed his life, when he was in an accident that authorities say was inches away from killing him. Hancock didn't get it. He made irresponsible choices, right up until the one that killed him. The team didn't intervene with dicipline or counseling when it was apparent Hancock was hitting it too hard.
He won't get another chance to make another one--others, though, shouldn't lose their opportunity because of his poor ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment