Now maybe I should have realized this at some point during the first month of baseball, but I was too busy watching the Nats lose/get rained out.  I went to yesterday’s Cinco De Mayo businessmanperson special between the Nationals and the Astros (what were you doing at 12:35 that was so important?).  I put on my new T-shirt:

My New Favorite Shirt!

and saddled myself up to the Red Porch Rooftop and ordered my summer beer standby-Sunset Wheat.

For the last three years (waaaaaayyy back from the RFK days) I’ve been drinking Sunset at Nationals games.  And before Nationals games. And after Nationals games.  And when playing as the Nationals on my MLB 2k7 Xbox 360 game. 

The point being it’s the perfect summer beer.  It’s, quite frankly, the perfect “summer at the park” beer-especially for a swampy sticky town like DC in the summer-it’s pretty damn refreshing.  So I order the beer, and then I see:

Don’t see what I see?  Let me blow that up for you:

Classic Amber?  WTF is Classic Amber?  It’s disgusting that’s what it is!  It also happens to be the substitute for the best beer at the park-because the Nats aren’t selling it anymore.  I asked the bartender to be sure-and nope.  No more Sunset.  He offered the amber, I made a “yuck” face (and I like a lot of ambers-don’t get me wrong) and he leaned in and said “I feel the same way.”  

To this I say boo.  The Nationals haven’t established a lot of traditions yet, and one of the reoccurring enjoyable experiences for me at the Park (where games are not won with any regularity, food and drink is not cheap and the neighborhood around the park isn’t as built up as they promised) was this beer. 

I’m not the only one-there are legions of Sunset fans.  Maybe a little part of me wanted it to be the beer at the park-you go to Wrigley, you drink Old Style.  St. Louis?  Budweiser is your choice. 

For a preppy, upscale, almost preppy, kinda ball park (Gelato, something called “The Lexus Club” and they have Peroni on tap)-it seemed like a good choice (short of micro-brew, that is) of beer to represent the park.

Now it may be that it didn’t sell well-which I tend not to buy given how many people seemed to be drinking it last year-but I don’t know.  Still-I can’t imagine that there isn’t a place for one or two taps to be set up to appease, well, me.

Look-it didn’t ruin my experience at the park, but no Sunset did take something away from the game for me.  It isn’t the end of the world, but baseball isn’t life or death anyway (or they wouldn’t call it in the 11th on account of rain.)  All I’m saying is I’ll buy less $7.50 a cup beer if this isn’t on tap-good for my liver, bad for business. 

How about you?  Were you/Are you a Sunset fan?  Is my outrage my own-or are others upset by this too?  Anyone from Nats Park reading and care to comment?  Anyone want to give me free beer?  No?  Oh okay.