How about not sucking?

Or the Mariners' owners could put a winning team on the field...

I still can't believe we helped pay for this goddamned stadium.

Nowadays people would just start shooting.

We have a baseball team?

Snore. More hockey.

They could start winning

while ten cent beer night may have been entertaining, it wasn't baseball. if you don't like baseball, don't go to a baseball game. simple.

@ 6 Hockey sucks go back to Canada.

Hockey rules, and the beer is stronger.

Hockey and baseball both rule.

Oh the hockey and the baseball should be friends.
Oh the hockey and the baseball should be friends.
One of them likes to skate on ice,
One of them likes to catch pop flies,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.

What a way to welcome the new SODO arena into town. 50 cent beer.....

Derek,

Thank you for this.

you mean, if we just build it they won't come? don't tell the mayor that.

Maybe they can kick more lesbians out for kissing?

Mariners simply have to win to draw more people which worked in the past.

Besides, the ownership is a little too conservative to sell beer that cheaply and risk such bacchanalian behavior.

By the way, the last two photos were from Cominsky Park.

Derek - Cleveland's Ten Cent Beer Night was only the second-most successful promotion/riot in baseball infamy. The top award goes to the Chicago White Sox, now and forever, for Disco Demolition Night. Not only did that one have cheap beer a-plenty and large-scale rioting, it also had fireworks, and a bonfire set in center field.

Baseball deserves a mostly-harmless promotion-night-gone-awry once a decade or so. (I'm sick of bobbleheads.) Perhaps Seattle can come up with something? Isn't Bat Day being revived this season?

Why don't we combine Hockey and Baseball?

maybe by moving to tampa as they threatened so long ago. may i be the first to holler GO TEAM! want reasonably priced food AND beer go to a real park WRIGLEY!

As far as minor league baseball is concerned, in the 70's the Toledo Mud Hens once held a cheap beer & bat night promotion that was seemingly conceived with drunken violence in mind. The fans didn't disappoint.

This is why the original Seattlites built a dome.

Because when the weather sucks, you can come into a place and watch a baseball game..even with a team that sucks..in dry, well lit comfort.

It pleases me that there's a wikipedia article titled "Ten Cent Beer Night".

I'm sure the owners will say the problem is antiquated facilities, and just fork over another $700 million, and all will be well. And the moron flunkies will pay it, and the sports-bitches on Slog will all swoon, because, SPORTS!

@26 - you do realize that The Stranger typically ignores all sports not hockey and soccer, the only section of a traditional newspaper missing here? And you do realize Safeco is a gem, and not at all the problem, and likely to last for decades? And that you will still spew condescension, because, SPORTS!

Get over yourself, you predictable hipster poseur. It's just a game.

This is Seattle - why not a ten cent beer night for all police officers, including Bellevue's finest?

@27. If it's "just a game ", then why does the city subsidise the stadium ?

Things that the Mariners did that made baseball less fun: ban certain garments (e.g. NY sucks), encourage a 'family friendly' atmosphere, kick out people for heckling opposing teams. They drove away their hardcore fans, the very people that made baseball games fun for the rest of us, because the product just isn't very compelling. Magical moments can occur, but they're magical specifically because of their rarity, not their content. The rest of the time the game really needs the diehard fans in the stadium to keep the rest of us entertained. The odds of witnessing a great game are low, and even then 80% of the excitement comes in the last few innings.

Other things that happened to baseball: beer tastings, pub quizzes, board games, xbox live, netflix. There are so many better, cheaper ways to spend a weekday night, with or without your friends, than there were 10-15 years ago.

delightful read, thanks derek!

Yeah, great idea. Get the fans drunk, so one of them will wipe out some family on the way home. That way, the fuckwits who run the Stranger can tell everyone that no one should have a car. Unless it's a Car2Go, which cannot be driven by a drunk because ... why was that again?

I must, however belatedly, applaud Derek Erdman for writing a genuinely brilliant piece of humor. I appreciate the rare moments I find myself convulsing with laughter. My favorite line: "Why would a person bring a chain to a baseball game? Those were different times, my friend."

Disclaimer 1: I realize the events weren't so funny at the time.

Disclaimer 2: My response may be colored by my finding baseball to be the most boring team sport ever invented. Oh, excuse me. I forgot about cricket.

And in response to bitethemailman @18. Yes, Bat Day would be unspeakably awesome.