Category: Games and Sports

The Day Ended With The Game At Fenway With Andy


Spent the evening with Andy Crouch watching the Yankees play the Red Sox at Fenway. The only thing missing was a New York loss. Like all the best baseball games, it was a morality play on the fields and in the stands. I was looking down the first base line from our seats in the right field corner when A-Ro(i)d got absolutely pegged square in the upper back by good guy Canuck pitcher Ryan Dempster. But that was when the Sox were winning. Next time up? A-Rod hits a long lingering homer.

Oh, yes. This is a beer blog. Andy suggested we meet at Citizen Public House just by the ball park. Excellent choice. The best sort of blend of good beer and drink, interesting food and comfortable but stylish setting. He was a little delayed so I was given the time to have a few Jack D’or by Pretty Things. And I added another species to the list with a flounder dinner. Once in the park and once the surreal feelings of walking into the TV that may only be experienced by a sports fan who has not seen his team at home since he was 10 years old, we sat. And talked about a lot of things. We both work in the law but in different fields and under different constitutions.

And we talked about beer. At the park, there was the feeling that a page had been turned back. Long Trail pale ale, Harpoon IPA and Wachusett Green Monster were on offer at nine bucks for a 12 ounce pour. Solid beers but not the range you might find in other parks. We touched on an idea I raised in passing the other week on Twitter, retro-craft. I wonder whether, once this era of over hopping, over souring and, frankly, the sort of over producing that reminds me the relationship between R+B and disco… we shall have retro-craft. Well balanced beers highlighting the main components of water, malt and yeast with hops returning to their proper job of framing and cutting the cloy. Will it happen?

There was another sort of good beer future on display elsewhere in town on Sunday. We were out on a forced march for the kids through the MIT campus in Cambridge looking for a little something something when we came upon a team of volunteers shredding and slicing pumpkins at the CBC. Got to speak with brewmaster Will Meyers a couple of times as the kids enjoyed the part of the vacation known as “Dad at the Beer Related Business”. We talked gourds, Will describing how he was looking for sugar pumpkin flavour, not pie and not even so much spice. This meant ensuring the pumpkins had limited fermentables, so the beer became an expression of the fruit, not a mirror of a dish made with pumpkin. The growing season was late so the crop was brought in from an Amish farm near Augusta, Maine. One of the group, Lee Movic of Belmont’s Craft Beer Celler, in passing called the beer they were help make was a fresh pumpkin ale. I will post some photos of the scene in a bit. I am still figuring out how to post images on the new iPad.

So, what is the take away? Three scenes: one comfortable, one a bit higher end and one all about exploring possibilities.

Your Friday Night Beer Blog Reading Highlights

It’s a distracted time. The game between Toronto and Boston is interfering with the game between Toronto and Boston. The first thunderstorm of the spring is moving through giving parched seedlings out in the garden as heavier duties of life nibble at the back of the mind. Yet, it is a warm Friday evening. The kids are out. The smells of that season we Canadians call “not winter” float in through the one open window as the first large drops pat pat pat on the bags of compost waiting to be settled into their plots on the next dry day. As good a time as any to see what’s going on out there on the internets.

→ In two weeks or so, I have a chance to hit the one orchard estate perry maker I know of in Ontario. Which makes me utterly jealous of Pete Brown. A folk music, cheese and perry/cider fest. Pleasures unimaginable.

→ Please just leave Bieber alone. In Canada, he is now a grown up… sorta.

→ Jeff makes some very good points on the impending reaction from big beer should what’s been considered (for about five years now and still maybe a few more to go) as craft beer not eat itself or, who knows, actually gain a significant market share… as in something approaching 20%. Me, I am quite comfortable knowing that big brewers will quite happily flood the market if need be with cheap and excellent beers inseparable from those offered by the current profitable puritans of craft marketing. I do like his idea that the approach is to add more flavour to lagers but I think this is but one prong of attack. Watch your flank, big craft.

→ Boak and Bailey started early and didn’t have to deal with the thug.

→ Stan then Craig reacted to a xenophobic article on how US craft brewers woujld teach Germany a thing or two by being boring and hoppy and achieving <1% marketshare. No consideration on the role of Mosel in the overall equation. Much hand wringing over ugly American interventions but, believe me, far better than dealing with the ugly side of Canadians.

There. The hockey is 1-0 in favour of my team at 8:23 pm while the baseball is the same score for… my team. JINKS! Better quit while I am ahead.

Ontario: Eephus Oatmeal Brown, Left Field Br’y, Tra’na

I think I only dislike one thing about the prospect of drinking this new beer. I have a strong suspicion that Jays fans made it. Have I mentioned I really dislike the Toronto Blue Jays? Years ago when I bounced in a bar in London, Ontario there was another bar down the road all done up with Detroit Tigers memorabilia except for signs that said “Jays Suck” which I loved. See, as an Expos fan since ’67 when I was a toddler with a cap and ’73 when I saw the Yanks lose at Fenway, I have had a dual allegiance. One sadly past. One present. Yet… I love baseball. The season starts this weekend. Spring, summer and fall all lay before me again filled with baseball. See, I have done this. I have hit doubles in America in recent years as a rather fat man off a better player than me. I have hand lathed bats. So, the baseball theme chosen for Toronto’s new Left Field Brewery has me.

But how about the beer itself. Start with the bottle. Note the Mississippi mud hue of the label’s background tone. I have a ball in that hue from the day I watched the Sox smoke the Jays. A one pitch knuckle ball with the Wakefield fingertip inprints and the Vernon Well’s pop up all marked. Far defter branding than Coopertown‘s even if I do have the yellow t-shirt. The aroma is date and brown bread. Lots of molasses but something herby spicy, too. Verging on Abt 12 with half the alcohol. Mohagany ale with mocha cream lacing foam and rim. Lots going on in the swally. There is that smoothness one associates with oat but also enough placement points of hop over the arc of the quaff that you are aware this is not someone’s take on Peculiar. Yet, that dripping brown malt. The blackstrap. The nut. The bread crust, dry cocoa and black tea. It is also a rejection of all those trendy needy nanos. It’s, bear with me, reminding me of the intention behind the Whale. Beer for people who like the taste of beer. And a bigger beer than its strength. I had an oatmeal stout from Quebec’s Le Castor earlier and was only disappointed with its heft. None of that here. Heft to lend.

I am given to understand from one young pup to my west that this bottle is not actually for sale but zooped up for samplin’ and reviewin’. It can be bought around town on tap in the Big Smoke. I don’t go there much. Next time I am there, I am finding me some of this.

How The Red Sox Might Have Collapsed Last Month

It was quite a thing to watch. Forget the numbers involved in the drop from first to playoff observer. It was clear something was wrong when Lester didn’t care enough to throw strikes in his last Yankee games. Today’s Boston Globe sets out one interpretation of what happened, based largely on anonymous interviews:

By all accounts, the 2011 Sox perished from a rash of relatively small indignities. For every player committed to the team’s conditioning program, there was a slacker. For every Sox regular who rose early on the road to take optional batting practice, there were others who never bothered. For every player who dedicated himself to the quest for a championship, there were too many distracted by petty personal issues.

Blame is placed on Francona’s health and marriage, too. But, a bit oddly, the most blame is placed on forcing a Saturday doubleheader against Oakland to avoid a hurricane coming through. Seems a bit of an odd thing to ditch a season over but the trio of Beckett, Lester, and Lackey are suggested to have done just that. Called a hatchet job, it’s probably not the whole story but the idea that a team of millionaires who only have to play a game could get this sour and uppity is amazing.

No wonder Epstein’s with the Cubs now.

Sackets Harbor NY Vintage Base Ball Tournament 2011

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This year’s vintage base ball game was remarkable. The weather was so hot I thought that I was going to faint when I slowed into second on a couple of doubles. The team had a few new faces but was as keen as ever and took both games after never winning a single game in the USA in the four previous seasons. Well, there was 2008 when the game was rained out. We declared that we had not lost by default.

PGP 9.0: Britain’s PM Has A Post Ale Go At Aunt Sally

I love it. I have always thought the pub game called “Aunt Sally” was the least identified and most offensive continuing recreational tradition amongst the English-speaking peoples and, but except for maybe the Queen having a go, Mr. Cameron’s attack on a defenseless image of an elderly lady playing of the game this weekend was about as classic an example as one might imagine of the game’s intersect of innocence and villainy:

After being handed his first half pint of beer, a 4.4 per cent proof tipple called Big Lamp Summer Hill Stout, Mr Cameron joked: “This is quite potent stuff.” But that did not stop him from buying another half, a Tring Special Effects beer. Mr Cameron then had a game of Aunt Sally, where players use six sticks to try to knock a ­wooden doll from a plinth. He felled it at the last attempt.

Here’s the thing. As I understand it, these sorts of throwing games go back centuries. Bowling is a rolling game and skittles is a lobbing game. And before the clever got the idea to lob a ball, they just made a game up by chucking a stick at something – often another stick or sticks standing on end. So, how do you make chucking one stick at another stick more laddish when, you know, it’s 1673 and video games, personal hygiene, “I’m Too Sexy” and human rights are centuries off? You pretend the stick you are aiming for is an old lady – perhaps even a witch! – named called Aunt Sally.

The world most indispensable web site, The Online Guide to Traditional Games has a lot of information on Aunt Sally including one theory that it is a descendant of the perhaps… well, certainly if one was the rooster… more offensive pub game of “throwing at cocks” in which male poultry were stoned to rounds of ales, laughter and applause. Timothy Finn’s indispensable book, Pub Games of England, traces a form of the game back to the 1300’s. Finn states at page 82 that the game suffered a downturn at the end of the Tudor period: “[t]he chief competition to the game came from other forms of skittles and bowls, most of which could claim at least some of the sophistication that Aunt Sally so obviously lacked.” An active league still plays in Oxford.

If I were to review the available visual record of this weekend’s events, Barry Clack’s photo above from the now suddenly defunct New of the World (at 168 years an institution a fraction of the age of Aunt Sally) only tells half the story, showing Cameron about to throw. He does not show the object of his implicit (even if utterly culturally buried and personally unrecognized) morality play of misogynistic wrath. He does capture, however, something of the heft of the sticks old Aunt Sally faced for the recreation of others. I note in the Online Guide‘s images, a gent in 1911 was allowed to wail away at her overhand. We may well be developing better manners about these things.

Friday Bullets For Vintage Base Ball Weekend

It’s Sacket’s Harbor weekend and we are past the point of no return. I think I the team will actually have enough players and, except for playing from 10 am to 2 pm in the 90F heat with 100% humidity, it should be great. I will park on the bench. Shouting things. Waving my hands at outfielders who ignore me. I may chew on a cigar but all of mine are Cubans. Filthy habit anyway. Bought some before the RMC game and couldn’t give them away. Shared on a few nights later and felt like crap the whole next day. What the hell has happened to me?

  • Why does some kid blowing of his job warrant 1,295 comments? 24 year old quits job hardly deserves that kinda attention. But maybe there was an earlier post I missed – 23 year old slacks off at work.
  • A greed. fancy schmansy tiny portions are pure evil. “Would you like some more?” is not.
  • Best description of Harper I have ever seen – he’s a centrist like 80% of Canadians. The power of the centrists is so strong is makes conservatives and socialists think they are in charge. Mental mind control of their brains… that’s what’s going on.
  • PEI is spending $500 per person to bring tourists there. Think of the underlying economic policy thought that requires. Even HB weeps now.
  • I love the beer nerd as record store clerk circa 1982 imagery. The slight rush when the guy taking your paper money nods in approval at your purchase. “Their best album… definitely under rated…”

There. Another week gone. Summer. Steak tonight. Bad banjo playing by the pool as I sip Belgian beer. That’s what I’m talking about.

All That Base Ball Was Really About That Pitcher

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I indulged in my other odd hobby yesterday. 1860s – 70s base ball. Two words. No gloves. No sliding. The ball springs off the bat with about as much zip as an Edam cheese would. Underhand pitching and bats that are like swinging a 2 x 4 fresh from the lumber yard. I put the thing together with friends. We took on graduating cadets from our Royal Military College as well as a mixed team of upstate New Yorkers from Canton and Rochester NY. The final was a 3-2 victory for the Americans. The team that became the Atlanta Braves beat Kingston on the same field 138 years ago… by a slightly larger margin.

And after it all, we retired to the brew pub. There is only one in the City so that’s what we call it. Over twenty folk wanting to relax over a few beer and get to know each other. Lively talk about the sad state of regional teams like the Bills and the Leafs, discussions about the different gun law ending with the trump card of a cadet explaining the fire power he’s been trained to use. And the beer. I hadn’t realized that oatmeal stout was not available in pitchers so I had a pint and bought a pitcher to share of the pale ale, both brewed by Montreal’s McAuslan Brewing. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a pitcher. Sounds sad, doesn’t it but life with the many rug rats does have its realities. What did I like about having one? The conviviality. The vessel was meant for sharing. Slopping pours topped up this glass and that. As talk ebbed and flowed from the Bills to bazookas.