April 14: Soccer

• Kansas City --- 4
• D.C. United --- 2

When it was first built, RFK stadium was designed to dually serve as homefield for the Redskins football team, and baseball's Senators. Now a dozen times a year, the pitcher's mound at RFK is lowered into the ground, sod is rolled out over the baselines, the lowerdeck that wraps around behind the home dugout is rolled out into the outfield, and the Nationals' home turf becomes a "football" (read: soccer) field home for DC United. Cost for each cycle of transformation: $40,000.

There is beer to be sold here, too, much of it to the rowdy sections of DC United loyalists who comprise the Barra Brava. Most of them have already reached a state of drunkenness by the time the game begins. Initially, soccer was to be a sideline to baseball vending for me. But I've gotten increasingly better at managing the early cutoff time -- the 65th minute, which leaves not more than an hour and a half of vending time -- and the reliable drinkers of the Brava allow for each game to be a minimum of five cases sold. Tips have gotten better, too. I'm still not sure if this is because I'm better at encouraging them, or because the generous habits of baseball fans have transferred to the soccer crowd over the past two years.

At any rate, soccer games -- including this season opening loss -- have recently proven to be better for vendors than baseball, as long as baseball is not yet really in its season. Baseball drinkers want a beer while they luxuriate in the sun, or are enfolded in a balmy night; soccer drinkers seem to approach it as winos do -- as insulation from the cold. My kind of audience.