Not A Good Time To Be A Beer Vendor At The Game

Perhaps as karmic payback for all those times they announce "last call" when they know damn well there's another hour of beer sales left, the weekend has seen a pair of disasters for beer vendors.

First was an 85-year old woman who sued Aramark after they took away her beer stand at Mets games.

Marty Block, who started working at Shea in 1973, claimed an Aramark manager told him, "Your mother is an antique dinosaur, old cripple that we do not want at Citi Field."

Aramark declined comment. In court papers, the company said it received complaints about long lines at the stand where Mildred Block worked with a male partner 40 years her junior. Block insisted she's still good enough for the beer-stand bigs, and that she "never made a mistake with the change."

The suit was tossed Friday, probably with good reason: the woman they replaced her with is 75 years old.

Then, yesterday in Blacksburg, the beer couldn't even get inside the building. In the afternoon, a truck full of beer meant for a fundraiser hit a fire hydrant, causing a flood and chain reaction of water main breaks that led to water being shut off inside Cassell Coliseum.

To be here and then get off the bus and see the river coming down the road right there when we got off the bus, we knew something was up," Coach Gary Williams said. "But the thought didn't go through my mind at that time that they were going to delay the game. I just thought it was a main that was leaking and they could fix it and we'd play."

Well, they did play; after a three-hour delay. Add to that the two overtimes, and that beer truck was needed more than ever.

Age discrimination suit tossed after Mets beer vendor, 85, is replaced by 75-year-old [NY Daily News] Terps conclude long day with big win [Washington Post]