Brewing up bonhomie For ballpark beer-slingers, the job is more about personal interaction than financial transaction By: David Sanderson Posted: 4:00 AM CDT Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/08/2023 (1133 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘Cold beer here! Get yer ice-cold beer here!”

As the two longest-serving beer hawkers at Shaw Park, Brett Ryall and Shaun Best have become as much a part of the Winnipeg Goldeyes game-day experience as hot dogs, stolen bases and furry yellow mascots. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then to learn that even when the two of them aren’t peddling wobbly pops to parched baseball fans, they are still on the receiving end of comments such as “hey, beer guy” or “bring me a cold one.”

“A lot of the people who recognize me don’t even drink (beer) at the games, but still make a point of waving ‘hi’ when they spot me in line at the grocery store or wherever,” says Best, who started with the club in 2012, the year the Fish won their first American Association league championship.

It’s much the same story with Ryall, who has been spending a good chunk of his summers at Shaw Park since 2006. Ryall was in Mexico a few years ago for a cousin’s wedding. He was relaxing around the hotel pool one afternoon when another guest stopped in his tracks and said “I know you; you’re Beer Man Brett,” referring to what it reads on Ryall’s Goldeyes name tag.

“I was like, ‘why, yes I am,’” says Ryall, standing next to Best on the concourse level at Shaw Park, 90 minutes before the Goldeyes are due to clash with the visiting Sioux City Explorers.

He followed that up by jokingly asking the fellow what he could fetch for him from the bar, but in his head he was thinking “man, I can’t go anywhere without somebody knowing me from the park.”

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Ryall, 35, guesses he was five years old when his dad took him to his first Goldeyes game, back when the club’s home diamond was situated in the northwest corner of Canad Inns Stadium. He continued cheering the team on after it moved downtown in 1999 to what was then known as Canwest Global Park.

The summer before he began studying computer science at the University of Manitoba, Ryall figured it was high time he get “some semblance of a job.” He immediately thought of the Goldeyes.

He was comfortable in front of a crowd owing to a high school theatre background, so a person in charge of hiring suggested he work in concessions. They asked him his age. He said he’d recently turned 18. Perfect, came the reply, as they were short of people legally old enough to sell beer.

“I remember coming home and my dad asking whether I got the job or not,” says Ryall, who, by day, is a software developer for Richardson International. “I let him know I was going to be the beer guy, to which he said ‘What the heck do you know about selling beer?’ ‘Well, I’ve fetched enough outta the fridge for you, over the years,’ I said.”

Best, 49, teaches high school in Winnipeg. He began volunteering at Winnipeg Blue Bombers games about 15 years ago, primarily to fill up his calendar during the summer months when he wasn’t in front of a classroom. He didn’t find that to be overly demanding, what with roughly two home games per month. In the spring of 2012 he paid a visit to Shaw Park, to see if he could volunteer his services there, as well.

There are no volunteers at Goldeyes games, he was told; every job is a paid position. But if that was something he was interested in, he was encouraged to attend a hiring fair scheduled for the following week.

“My title at Bomber games was fan services, so when I went to the (hiring) fair, that’s what I wrote down on the application,” he continues. The person who interviewed him asked if he was aware working in fan services involved learning a dance routine. He wasn’t, but said he was more than willing to give it a shot.

“Except after looking me up and down, they said beer sales might be a better fit.’” (Here he pats his tummy, as if to say “yeah, that was probably a smart move.”)

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There are 50 home games in a Goldeyes season, not counting the pre-season and playoffs. Ryall and Best generally try to work half to two-thirds of them, around their full-time jobs.

It depends on a number of factors, they say together, when asked how many people are selling beer in the stands in the afternoon or evening of a game. If advance ticket sales are strong, and the weather is co-operating, there could be as many as four of them, Best says, who, like his counterpart, is dressed in shorts, sneakers and a bright yellow T-shirt reading “concession crew.”

For this evening’s game, it looks like they have the joint to themselves. That suits each of them just dandy.

“By now, we like to think we know what we’re doing,” says Best, who has sold as little as a single beer on nights when it was cold and rainy, and as many as 250 on afternoons when the temperature soared into the high 30s. “And even though we’ll basically split the park in half tonight — Brett will handle one side and I’ll take the other — we both keep an eye out for each other’s sections, if one of us has to suddenly head back to get more beer or ice, and is gone for five or 10 minutes.”

When the first pitch is scheduled for 6:30 p.m., as is the case this evening, the guys report for work by 5 p.m., 30 minutes before fans start flowing through the gates. Their “office” is immediately adjacent to Goldie’s Grill. That’s where their tools of the trade are stored, most importantly, a plastic tub capable of holding up to 60 473-ml cans.

“To me, it’s about taking care of the paying customers, and making sure they’re having a great time at the park, regardless of the score.”–Brett Ryall

At 16.5 ounces per can, a fully loaded tub can weigh as much as 70 pounds once they’ve added ice, Ryall points out. Thankfully, Best is a MacGyver-type. Years ago, he figured out a way to fasten seatbelts he’d removed from an old Crown Victoria to the sides of the tubs, to be used as heavy-duty shoulder straps.

A strong back is important but so, too, is a quick wit. Ryall, who also dons a set of gardening kneepads to make things easier on his joints, smiles, saying if you attend games often enough, you’re already familiar with the multiple zingers he trots out, such as “the bases are loaded, how about you?”

“This year, the team isn’t winning as much as they have in the past so I’ve probably used ‘if you don’t like the score, you can always drink more’ more often than I cared to,” Best admits.

Ryall, who’s also known for saluting customers following every transaction with a tip of his cap, says one of the best things about working for the Goldeyes is that supervisors encourage staff to let their personality shine through. That could mean posing for selfies with groups of fans or joining them in a chorus of Take Me Out to the Ball Game, during the seventh-inning stretch.

“Of course it’s nice to go home at the end of the night with a few dollars in tips, but after 16 years, that’s become secondary, almost,” Ryall continues. “To me, it’s about taking care of the paying customers, and making sure they’re having a great time at the park, regardless of the score.”

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Rob and Kathleen (last names withheld) have been Goldeyes season ticket holders since 1999.

The married couple’s seats are in Section K, directly behind home plate, but this evening they’ve made the 150-metre trek to an area in right field, where Ryall has been plying his trade for several minutes already. Sure, they could have grabbed a couple of cold ones from a stationary bar on the concourse, Rob mentions, but where is the fun in that?

“We enjoy the interaction with Brett, he’s a pretty cool guy,” Kathleen says, after purchasing a lemon radler for herself and an Angry Fish tall boy for her husband. (All of the beverages in the beer hawkers’ tubs are produced locally, Ryall says, noting he’s fairly certain he’s sampled everything he sells at least once… you know, in the name of research.)

“We definitely watch for Brett at the games, only we usually hear him before we see him,” Rob says with a chuckle, adding they are also very familiar with Best, who’ll be servicing their section tonight. Equal opportunists, they promise they’ll fetch a beverage from him, too, in a few innings’ time.

“Shaun and Brett are the two best beer hawkers at Shaw Park, bar none, and one of the first things I do when I get here is scan the crowd with my eyeglass, to see if they’re working or not.”–Les Tazumi

Les Tazumi, whose regular seat is in Section F, five rows up from the home team’s dugout, has been coming to Goldeyes games at Shaw Park since “Day 1.” Besides a team jersey and cap, he also sports a telescopic device suspended around his neck for the express purpose of finding the “beer guys.”

“Shaun and Brett are the two best beer hawkers at Shaw Park, bar none, and one of the first things I do when I get here is scan the crowd with my eyeglass, to see if they’re working or not,” he says, demonstrating his technique.

Tazumi attends Bombers and Jets games as well; just don’t ask him the names of the people who sell him a beer on those occasions. He doesn’t have a clue.

“I can’t remember when I learned Shaun and Brett’s names, and vice-versa, but yeah, it feels like they’re friends more than people selling in the stands,” Tazumi says. “I always look forward to hearing them shouting out their various lines… telling their jokes. Interacting with the two of them is one of the things I enjoy most about coming to games.”

Seventeen and 11 seasons in respectively, Ryall and Best see no reason why they would stop slinging suds, any time soon.

“I’m not saying there aren’t times when it’s been a long day in the classroom and I think, do I really want to work tonight, too?” Best allows. “But then I get here and start chatting and having fun with fans I’ve gotten to know through the years. Before you know it, the game’s over and I’m looking forward to the next one.”

“As for myself, I’m still comfortable doing the job and more importantly, I’m physically able to do the job so no, I don’t see why I wouldn’t continue,” Ryall pipes in. “It’s probably the same with Shaun, but I always find the final game of the season to be bittersweet. You don’t mind the break after working hard all summer, but at the same time, you know you won’t be seeing a lot of these faces for a while.

“I’ll be like, ‘see you next season,’ to everybody, and for the foreseeable future, I’ll really mean it.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca