Playoff run means extra paydays for beer vendors

October 23, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS

The gates had yet to open when Aaron Sims ducked inside a secure locker room beneath Busch Stadium to put on his uniform for Game 3 of the National League Championship Series.

About an hour before the first pitch, Sims emerged into the stadium proper, announcing his presence in a baritone destined to resound through the lower left-field box seats until last call — aka the seventh inning.

“The REAL BEER MAN IS HERE. Now, who wants ONE?”

For Cardinal Nation, the 2011 playoffs brings civic pride, unbridled joy and the bizarre embrace of a bushy-tailed rodent.

For the beer vendors stalking the aisles at Busch, the team’s run through the National League division and championship series already has translated into five bonus paychecks. With the Cardinals taking on the Texas Rangers in the World Series, there are even more ahead.

“We love those extra paydays,” said Ray Wilkins, wrapping up his 20th year hawking Anheuser-Busch products at the stadium bearing the same name.

The vendors politely decline to say exactly how much extra cash can be gleaned from better- guzzling playoff fans, as opposed to the regulars who show up on any old weeknight.

But they weren’t shy in complaining that the cost of a Bud or Bud Light — $8 for the first 83 home games of the season — had jumped to $8.75. In beer-vendor economics, the price increase portended a 75-cent reduction in the $2 tip that normally flows from a $10 bill.

Sims, a vendor for 25 years, maintains that the compensation is secondary.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I still make money at this. But it’s the hugs, the thank-you notes and the birthday cards [from regular customers] that makes it worthwhile.”

Unlike the players who earn their way to The Show from the lowly minor leagues, the superstars of beer vending start at the top — in the nosebleed sections — and work their way to the bottom.

The payoff for seniority and better-than-average beer-selling statistics is a standing assignment in the box seats — all the better to cultivate the same season-ticket holders year after year.

Terry Fritz and his family long have occupied seats in Sims’ corner of the park — the one also patrolled by Cardinals’ left fielder Matt Holliday.

The Fritzes and Sims have grown so close that the vendor has become part of a family tradition of bringing the home team luck by snacking on red licorice each time St. Louis comes to bat.