Beer Is Too Profitable for Coliseum to Close the Tap Permanently

Up until the time the Dodgers arrived in Los Angeles, enlisting the Coliseum as a temporary home, beer was not permitted in the stadium.

At a Rams football game, a television crew, whose sponsor was a brewery, discovered shortly before kickoff that it was without merchandise to pour for some close-up commercials.

We are talking TV in the 1950s.

A member of the crew was dispatched to a liquor store near the Coliseum. As he returned through the stadium gate, packing a case of the sponsor’s product, he was nabbed by a cop and relieved of his package.

And when he cussed out the cop, he was booked. Beer wasn’t poured in commercials that night.

The year before, police arrested a guy in Tujunga and charged him with fraud. He took $2,900 from two people, cutting them in for a piece of the beer concession at the Coliseum, then as dry as Saudi Arabia.

Walter O’Malley, late owner of the Dodgers, made an eloquent plea before the Coliseum Commission, asking for the right to sell beer.

“It isn’t the money,” said Walter mischievously. “It’s just that baseball isn’t baseball without a hot dog and a beer.”

Thus, in the 35th year of the Coliseum’s existence, beer made a triumphal entrance, and it never left until Sunday when stadium officials banned it for the Raiders’ football game with Seattle.

This had followed continued trouble at previous games where folks drinking beer, if not liquids containing higher octane, worked over their neighbors, one of whom almost got killed.

Envisioning England and the soccer mayhem, the Coliseum Commission slapped a one-day suspension--a sort of trial ban--on beer.

And what developed was a very good football game, darkened by scarcely any trouble in the seats.

At one point in the second quarter, a chant began of “We want beer,” but observers couldn’t be sure whether this was inspired by fans who where thirsty, or by the concessionaire.

It has been a general feeling for years that maybe 95% of the trouble created at sports stadiums is drink-oriented.

But when the Coliseum nails consumers $3.25 for a regular beer and $4.25 for a large one, and it sells a lot of both, it isn’t going to kick out this commodity for long.

It doesn’t seem to matter to Art Shell, coach of the Raiders, whether beer is sold in the Coliseum. Art seems to win there in either case.

Since assuming leadership of the club, Shell at home is 10-0. He is commanding a team right now that distinctly is a force in the National Football League. It has won five of six this season. And it is winning back the admiration of the local populace, soured the last couple of years on the Raiders and their adventures.

It is a break for the Raiders that they are playing in a division (American Conference West) less-muscled than usual. Denver has retrogressed. So has Seattle. San Diego has languished in the cellar for years.

Only Kansas City has shown improvement and isn’t going to be easy for the Raiders, who are proceeding satisfactorily amid certain handicaps off the field.

Except for their game at home with Chicago, drawing 81,000, the Raiders are suffering at the gate. The 50,000 they drew for Seattle on Sunday is smaller than it should be for a team running as warm as Los Angeles.

This stems mainly from the small season ticket-sale of the Raiders--fewer than 23,000. The club doesn’t bag its money in March, as most pro teams do. Nor does it enjoy income from luxury suites, as most pro teams do.

If beer were available, the Raiders would cry in it, were it not for the fact they are performing so well tactically.

At their next home game, it is believed that beer sales will be reinstituted, but not after the first half.

If a drinker is conscientious, he can get the job done in that period.