A visitor to Dickey-Stephens Park discovered that he couldn’t buy a beer and a hot dog at the same refreshment stand, but had to go to two different stands. He wondered why.
Pete Laven, general manager of the Arkansas Travelers, said this was a continuance of a longstanding tradition at Traveler games. Beer and hot dogs were segregated at the old Ray Winder Field too, he said.
Mainly, it’s a question of equipment and layout, Laven said. At the main refreshment stand, which sells hot dogs and many other items, there’s little room left for stacks of canned beer. Dickey-Stephens is one of only a few ballparks that still sells beer in the can, Laven said, although draft beer too is now available in the beer garden. (Because of the cans, Traveler fans can buy those big units of Foster’s, the kind that gave a former major-league pitcher his nickname: “Oil Can.”)
The visitor had suspected the policy had something to do with keeping beer away from minors, but Laven said that wasn’t so. “We have other ways of doing that,” he said.
