Sale of jumbo beers pits city vs. store owners
Arlington Heights considers ban of cans police say lead to trouble
When you see oversized, single cans of beer on display at a liquor store, it's probably safe to assume the target consumer is not an individual who is going to take the can home, put it in the refrigerator and pop it open later as accompaniment to a sublime meal of Elysian Fields Lamb Loin with Cumin, Smoked Ricotta & Buckwheat.*
No, you buy the big can of beer with the intention of guzzling that big can in the near future.
This is why Arlington Heights is considering a ban on sales of large, single-serving cans of beer and other alcoholic beverages. Police say many of the customers for such containers are homeless, and the sale of these individual big cans of beer contributes to public intoxication problems, including disorderly conduct, theft and public urination.
Liquor store owners say such a ban would hurt sales. The village will have a meeting next week to discuss the issue.
I'm thinking even if you ban big cans o' beer, people will still find quick cheap ways to get drunk.
*I got that from an online menu from Charlie Trotter's. I would have thought Cumin, Smoked Ricotta and Buckwheat were a power trio who had a couple of hits in the 1980s.
Hitting a baseball at the major league level is considered by many to be the most difficult feat in team sports.
Look at it this way. You can make a three-pointer. Maybe not with Kobe Bryant guarding you, but you can make it. You can throw a 20-yard spiral to a wide receiver. You can get a hole in one in golf. You can bowl a perfect game.
But you can't hit a Justin Verlander fastball. For that matter, you'd never strike out Albert Pujols. And when I say "you," I mean all of us.
Imagine trying to play the game while impaired. The late Dock Ellis had a lifetime record of 138-119, won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates in 1971 and was the starting pitcher in the All-Star game that year, but he's best remembered for his claim that when he pitched a no-hitter in 1970, he was on LSD.
"I [thought] Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire . . . and once I thought I was pitching to . . . Jimi Hendrix, who was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate," Ellis said.
"The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't."
Wow.
In a 1974 game, Ellis deliberately tried to hit every batter on the Cincinnati Reds. After plunking the first three hitters and walking Tony Perez, who managed to duck every pitch, Ellis threw two pitches at Johnny Bench's head, at which point his manager finally took him out of the game.
They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Who knows what Miguel Cabrera's blood alcohol level was when he took the field for the Sox/Tigers game last Saturday, but given that Cabrera registered an astonishing .26 on the morning of the game, one can assume he was deeply hung over or still somewhat soused at game time.
This was one of the biggest games of Cabrera's career, with the Tigers trying to clinch the division. And the night before, he was partying with a White Sox player, finally getting home in the wee hours of the morning, and getting into a scuffle with his wife that led to a police call.
Little wonder Cabrera, who is in the second year of an eight-year, $152.3 million deal, went 0-for-4 in the game and left six base runners stranded.
That said, I still can't condone the behavior of Twins fans, who chanted "Al-co-ho-lic!" at Cabrera during Tuesday's one-game playoff. (Cabrera went 2-for-5 with a homer and two RBIs, but the Tigers lost in extra innings, completing one of the worst collapses in baseball history.)
I just don't get that -- the whole practice of riding a player about some off-the-field mistake, whether it's a drunken escapade or a messy divorce or drug use. As a human being, don't you want to be better than that? Especially if you're chanting "al-co-ho-lic!" and chuckling it up while your kid looks up at you?
On the same day earlier this week when a federal judge in Chicago was ordering the alleged peephole pervo to home confinement, the woman in the "Krazy Glue case" was in a courtroom in Chilton, Wis., pleading not guilty to charges she sought revenge on her straying lover by gluing his organ to his stomach.
The alleged peephole videographer and the alleged penis-gluing woman.
Hmmm, maybe we should get these two crazy kids together.