Tag: Sports & A Beer

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Sports & A Beer – Stop the Hot Takes

For someone like me who has established favorite teams and the agony that goes along with rooting for said teams, this is a bit of a golden age.  I can call up highlights with a touch of the finger, dig up arcane facts and get all the hot takes a fan could want.

Lately, I have wearied of the onslaught though.  The Summer of Lillard with YouTube videos of what must be 942 trade scenarios and podcasts claiming Chelsea is a broken team before three games are complete have me desiring the old days when I would have to wait until the next days sports page to get information.

Now, are these tweets and rants wrong?  No.  But they serve no purpose seemingly other than filling in an empty gap in time and space until actual solid information arrives.  Sound and fury, signifying nothing as a famous fan of Stratford-Upon-Avon FC once opined.

Or maybe I just need to take a break from the pundits and just watch the action.

For beer, it is the summer heat remnants and the best way to enjoy a game is with a session beer.  Dribble Belt from Russian River is a particularly good Session IPA for watching the World Basketball Championships or for football Angelenos, find a refreshing pilsner from Los Angeles Ale Works or Common Space before a Rams/Chargers game at SoFi.

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In the Tap Lines for September 2023

California has been in weird times lately. Hollywood strikes, a tropical storm for the first time in 84 years and robotaxis wild in San Francisco. Let’s get back on sturdier ground in beer…

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from the new trendy beer city, Pittsburgh

~ special featured reviews of Oktoberfest beers

~Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events

~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark

~ A Book & A Beer reads Circe by Madeline Miller

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers

~ Sports & A Beer returns with too many hot takes

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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Sports & A Beer – Women’s World Cup

There has been some bad vibes from the 2023 WWC. Loads of injured players who couldn’t play. Teams feuding with coaches. Pay being a omnipresent concern.

Granted, there were a lot more concerns with the Qatar World Cup on the Men’s side but I have come to expect shady, un-fun aspects to the boys.

The positive part of me sees this as growing pains. For too long, too many issues were considered no concern. Pay, as I said at the top, being first and foremost on the long list but poor playing surfaces, sexism, predatory coaches and even shorts were a problem. Literally, this year, 2023, press was made of decisions to have kits with anything other than white shorts.

But the expanded field of teams has shown parity as favored teams have looked human and the plucky Morrocan side made the knockout round and had a player in uniform while still obeying religious clothing rules.

Maybe these bad vibes are needed to get us and FIFA to change for the better.

Now, to drink. I would say g’day to a big ol’ can of Fosters Lager but maybe a better choice would be to find a pale ale or session IPA with some of those NZ hops to toast the Kiwis who didn’t make it out of group play.

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In the Tap Lines for August 2023

August is filled with lots of, shall we say, interesting posts coming from me. Stay tuned in for the two daily posts for monthly features like where I pair beer with books, podcasts and eve sports stories.

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from around the United States

~ special featured reviews of beers from around the country

~Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events

~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark

~ A Book & A Beer reads The Sullivanians by Alexander Stille

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Who Shat at the Wedding

~ Sports & A Beer returns with bad Womens World Cup vibes

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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Sports & A Beer – Bad Owners

If you are a sports fan, your favorite team just might be owned by an asshole.  Not saying that all people who own teams are but there does seem to be a preponderance of assholes amongst the super-rich who can swallow clubs whole.

The English Premiere League is riddled with fan groups trying to push owners out.  The NBA had the delightful Donald Sterling around for what seemed like forever before he finally became too toxic.  And the NFL’s version was Dan Snyder who will forever be linked to the Washington Redskins and not their new era Commanders name.

There are articles, and probably podcasts aplenty, about Snyder and his mis-management of the Washington Football Club.  His stubborn death grip on the Redskins name being first on the list despite the known fact, that changing the name made any Redskin emblazoned gear more pricey and you would double dip by selling all new gear to diehard fans.

What made it all the more egregious was that he didn’t listen.  Not to fans or even fellow owners.  When you get to a point where your delusion field blocks out your fellow richie rich’s, well that is a red flag.

Which is why it is hilarious that there was an anti-Dan beer brewed.  Makes me wish there were more beers that take on the 1%. 

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In the Tap Lines for July 2023

Climate change has weirded out the weather here in Los Angeles and in many other spots on the globe but this month is the time for lighter beers as we get higher temperatures. Plus the other fun stuff below….

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from Australia for the Women’s World Cup

~ special featured reviews of beers from around the country

~Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events

~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark

~ A Book & A Beer reads The Trackers by Charles Frazier

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Drifting Off with Joe Pera

~ Sports & A Beer returns with Bad Owners

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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Sports & A Beer – The Transfer Portal

When Deion Sanders moved to coaching the University of Colorado, he touched off a massive amount of player movement, most prominently out from last year’s football team into what is now called the transfer portal.

Now I am all for Name and Likeness deals and college players getting paid (and maybe coaches not getting paid more than 10 college professors) but this wholesale switching from college team to college team just seems even further from the collegiate ideal than before.

Why not just have a football minor league with academies for younger players? That way players can learn about agents and handling money and life after sports.

But I digress from the topic at hand. I think that a portal can be good but it does need to have some guardrails. A coach can’t push someone into a portal and neither should a player move into it just because he was passed over for a starting position.

I thought of this in connection with beer because brewers leave breweries to work at a different brewery or start their own. I saw Kevin Davey who was at Wayfinder who now is under the Heater Allen umbrella. Iam McCall from Riip Beer in the South, South Bay is going on to his own place. They are using the brewer portal to start freah.

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Sports & A Beer – Another New Jersey

Not talking about the state but rather the state of multiple jerseys in sports. Every team seems to have a home jersey, a road jersey, a third jersey for home or away, a themed jersey just for one season, then the process starts again next year.

Digression – Maybe the way to stop tanking is to force teams in the bottom five to wear only two styles all year.

I follow the Timbers and Thorns of Portland and Dear God, it is a design rollercoaster from weird dusty pinks to punk Shakespeare when the best uniforms are almost always the most simple. Now, that is not to say a refresh isn’t warranted or that creativity should be stifled but more does not always correlate to better. Don’t get me started on the Oregon Duck football jerseys. Why highlighter yellow? And with advertisers added onto it, things can get squeezed in with bad results.

Maybe this is the old man, back in my day coming out but, my vote is for a standard every year home and away pair and them have one alternate that changes year by year. It’s hard enough to keep track of players and also keep track of which jersey is from what year.

Now your job is to find a branded extension set of beers and decide if they really need them all, or which one is your favorite in a group. Find a bunch of Sculpins or Torpedos or Hopnosis and really check if more is better.

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In the Tap Lines for May 2023

It has been a colder than usual spring here in L.A., heck the whole West Coast. No joke but it snowed in Portland on April 1st. Let’s dive into a month of beer fun with shorts on.

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from the upcoming Firestone Walker Invitational

~ special featured reviews of whatever is new in my ‘fridge

~Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events

~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark

~ A Book & A Beer reads Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Doctor Dante

~ Sports & A Beer returns with the proliferation of team jerseys

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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Sports & A Beer – Tanking

To be a commissioner for a major sports league probably requires spending an inordinate amount of time to stop teams from tanking.

Tanking being that decision to either trade away or not play your best players in order to get a high draft pick after the season. The poster child of tanking were the Philadelphia 76ers about six years ago who re-imagined tanking as “the process”.

My beloved but hard to watch Portland Trailblazers have pressed the tank button the last two years and the Dallas Mavericks head coach came out and said they were not going for a win, were actively trying to avoid the playoffs which they mathematically could have reached.

To properly tank you have to avoid that Mavericks path. You cannot publicly acknowledge the tank. You just silently do it. Otherwise, karma will more than likely come for you. By karma, I mean the league office with fines.

You can debate the morality of tanking but until you have a real negative consequence such as relegation to a lower league, there is no stick nor enough of a carrot in expanded playoffs to not do it.

For beer to pair with this not so savory part of sports, see if you can find one of two beers, both related to consensus NBA pick #1 this year, Victor Wembanyama…

  1. Something from the R&D brewer from Figueroa Mountain – Victor Novak.
  2. A French Saison to match Wembanyama’s nationality.