What Do Giants Do With Booze You Tried To Sneak In?

​A New Yorker cartoon from the days of yore depicted a burglar, large bag of swag over his shoulder, jauntily tipping his cap at a startled woman sitting up in bed. In the caption, he nonchalantly explained that today's economic conditions had forced many a small businessman into alternative means of employment.

Which brings us, naturally, to baseball. The notion of bleeding nearly $9 for a watery brew at AT&T park has forced many an honest man into an equally unfamiliar position: smuggler. Amateur attempts at being a beer mule invariably result in cargo falling into the hands of ballpark officials. Well, what then?

Sadly, the answer to this question is as predictable as the Giants' sub-par weekend showing vs. Boston. The team's official policy regarding seized bottles and cans of beer or soda is simple: Open them up, pour them out, and recycle the receptacle. Thus sayeth team vice president of media relations Staci Slaughter.

"Most people know by now that we check bags. They either tailgate at their cars or go to a bar," she says. "Our goal is to keep as family-friendly an environment as possible at the ballpark."

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Your $1.49 24-ounce cans of Busch beer do not contribute to that desired environment. An $8.75, stadium-purchased vat of Coors Light does, however. The team, incidentally, allows outside food into the park as it wishes to keep baseball affordable, Slaughter adds.

Our calls to Oakland Athletics' personnel querying what they do with confiscated beer and soda were not returned (neither was our Miller High Life).

While it's stretching things a bit to urge cans and bottles of purloined beer to be donated to charity, hard-up folks do enjoy soda, we hear. And if drinking Coke and Pepsi isn't healthful, well, neither is consuming ballpark food. And the Giants donate plenty of leftover grub to local outlets.

Both Food Runners and the San Francisco Food Bank accept leftovers from AT&T Park and the Public House restaurant. When asked if those leftovers include garlic fries, Slaughter replied that it's not out of the question at all.

They just aren't able to match those fries with their natural pairing: Cheap, oversize cans of crap American beer.

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