Major League Baseball's newly implemented pitch clock has, so far, resulted in games being 17% shorter. As a result, some teams some teams have acted swiftly about beer and concession sales.
At least four teams – the Diamondbacks, Twins, Brewers and Rangers – have reacted to game shortages by extending beer sales into the eighth inning rather than stopping in the seventh, which had been standard across MLB entering 2023.
In the early 1980s, virtually every team sold beer for the complete game, but concern over drunk driving and assaults left many teams no choice but to halt suds sales early.
By 1985, only eight MLB teams''— the Astros, Phillies, Pirates, Padres, Angels, Cardinals, Twins and Expos — had no time restrictions on selling beer. In fact, the Expos would serve beer until an hour the game, a policy still employed by most European soccer teams.
Six years later, almost all of those baseball teams had compromised. Gone was the 32-ouncer deep into the ninth inning. And even beer giants were forced to acquiesce.
In 1991, Anheuser-Busch — the largest beer producer in the United States — owned the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s no surprise that the Cardinals were the last team to enact policy changes, becoming the final MLB team to cut off beer sales after the seventh.
In a stroke of irony, there was a time that the Milwaukee Brewers, playing in Miller Park, were among the most progressive of teams, cutting off suds after the sixth.
But now the Brewers have flipped, allowing beer through the eighth inning. Rick Schlesinger, the team's head of business operations, told reporters that the team would monitor their new policy change and adjust it if safety becomes a larger issue.