A Proper Dress Code For Getting Shitfaced At The Ballpark

Today our Tom Ley goofed on the silly new dress code restrictions for the St. Louis Cardinals Ballpark Village (i.e., a place where bros from Dardenne Prairie will get shitfaced after another triumphant Cardinals win against a morally inferior opponent). Ley pointed out that there was no shortage of racial coding to some of these guidelines, which led to scorching hot responses like this one…

Dress codes are inherently ridiculous. More often than not, the dress codes enforced at some dipshit nightclub or outdoor Bud Light chillout tent act is a public announcement of self-delusion: a thoroughly unclassy joint announcing how classy it is. Your standard pregame crowd at a Cardinals game isn't gonna look like the parlor at the fucking Yale Club. It's the transparent desperation of a Kardashian Vogue cover transposed to cover entire populations of beer funnelers. There's a time and place to dress "classy"—a wedding, a funeral, at Caesar's to announce a boxing match, etc. A regular season game against the Astros isn't it. For real, you can only wear a Cards jersey to the Cards bar when it's a game day? That's fucking weird.

HOWEVER, all that said, I understand the need to make sure that your local bar is not overrun with assholes. Instituting a dress code that forbids what you perceive as gangwear because you watched the movie Colors 20 years ago does not accomplish this. Instead, I decided to come up with a set of basic, universal principles for dressing yourself prior to drinking 30 $8 Miller Lites at the stadium. You probably follow these guidelines anyway because you're a normal person and not a dick, and these only need to be understood, not posted on every door like a religious proclamation. Let's go through the rules:

No profanity on T-shirts. Oh, you thought that ASK ME IF I GIVE A FUCK shirt made you look like a real man, didn't you? I feel like you should give MORE of a fuck.

No bare feet.

No hobo rags. Everyone gets jusssst a bit uneasy when Old Hobo Joe comes tumbling into the place with his tattered overcoat and makeshift convertible black sneakers with his toenail fungus on display for all. Even if they're your finest hobo rags, leave them at home, which is to say the cardboard box you sleep in behind the KFC.

No weapons. The best way to know if your bar patron is a true THUG is not by looking for a bandanna. Instead, I would be on the lookout for, I dunno, things that can kill you: knives, brass knuckles, very large guns, etc. That's not classy!

If you've got headphones on, they better be noise-canceling. I don't wanna hear your shit. You have awful taste in music.

Please wear a shirt. If you have a dress shirt on and no undershirt, please don't unbutton it all the way.

This is not a goddamn shirt.

Wear pants or shorts. Any layer beyond underwear will do.

No visible genitalia.

No bandoliers, even if they're those harmonica bandoliers that the Blues Traveler guy wears. I don't want the threat of folk music popping up.

No musical instruments, actually.

NO FUCKING GOOGLE GLASS.

No Drakkar Noir.

No cleats. What are you, the manager? Get the fuck out. No one's impressed that you just came from a 3M intramural softball game.

No horn implants.

Honestly, you could strike all those guidelines except for the Google Glass one and still have a respectable crowd. You want everyone to have a good time, right? You don't want a lingering sense of menace at the bar because the Lords of Hell came barging in. I get it. I'm pretty sure the above rules will help you more than a NO SAGGY PANTS! edict.

Photo of what we suppose the St. Louis Cardinals Ballpark Village will look like via Getty