Will someone please think of the alcoholics?

One of the most annoying things in life is when people try to limit your vices for you. The term “drink responsibly” is less of a rule and more of a loose guideline, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let doctors define “binge drinking” for me. That’s why when I go to a sporting event, a bar, or a beerfest, I treat the cutoff time like a buzzer. If you’re like me, last call prompts a small amount of panic, and while I haven’t been to one of these new-and-improved baseball games yet, I’m a little more motivated now that a few stadiums are coming around to selling alcohol through the eighth inning.

MLB’s implementation of the pitch clock has shortened the time of play, and thus the time that patrons can drink. You used to be able to amble up to the concession stand of your choice, order a pile of nachos and a beer, and miss maybe an at-bat or two.

Now, the seventh inning comes in hot like cutoff time in Utah or Maine, and really what’s the point of drinking if you can’t get liquored up enough to forget when they’re going to cut you off? The seventh inning and 1 a.m. are too early to call it quits, and that’s why when I lived in Nebraska during college, there was always a late-night caravan of drunks risking DUIs driving to Iowa at 1:15.

If you want to avoid early onset sobriety, there are only five venues that offer booze sales through the eighth inning — the Arizona Diamondbacks, Texas Rangers, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, and Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles were ahead of the game as they already had a policy through the eighth inning or three-and-a-half hours, whichever comes first.

The Mets and Marlins haven’t ruled out extending the deadline, and given that you can get blasted in New York and Miami until alcohol loses its taste and effect, that’s admirable.

However, what I can’t abide is the amenity the Rangers have started offering.

You can now order beer from your seats, and I’m not talking about yelling “Two Coors!” at the vendor walking the aisles. You can go on an app and have some unlucky stadium worker sprint a Twisted Tea tallboy to your awaiting hand. No word of if they will pour the adult beverage directly into your mouth, but here’s hoping catheters are on the next round of vice upgrades.

During the opening third of Wall-E — stay with me here — we see that humans have taken advantage of technology to a frightening degree. They’re chair-bound and fed by robots at the tap of a button. It’s really a grotesque leap to make because if we were able to reach that level of technology, we’d find a way to avoid being blobs. We’re eons away from chair life, but Ozempic is already here, and I’m digressing pretty hard.

That said, what the Rangers are doing is the first step toward the Wall-E-fication of humanity. If you’re so dependent on apps that you can’t either wait two minutes for the next vendor to walk down your row, or stroll your ass to the concession stand, you deserve every bedsore you’re eventually going to amass.

I said I was an alcoholic, but I never said I was lazy.