Topical Guide 744
Mark Dorset
Beer: Real and Fictional
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 48:
“Come on, let’s sit in the back. I want to hear it all. You want a beer?”
“Sure. Piels.”
“Nah. Have an LL. You’ll like it.”
Animated television commercials for Piels Beer (of Brooklyn and Staten Island) were voiced by Bob and Ray (Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding). In one, they urged viewers to “Purchase as much Piels as you can carry home.”
Leroy Lager (LL to its devotees) did not advertise on television. The bottles did feature a poem on the back of each one, though.
Places: Real But Nonexistent: Ebbets Field
Furniture: Stadium Seats
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 48:
“An empty warehouse?”
“It’s not quite empty. It’s full of seats.”
“Seats.”
“The seats from Ebbets Field.”
John G. Zinn, “Ebbets Field (Brooklyn, NY),” Society for American Baseball Research:
The controversial story of the failed effort to build a new ballpark in Brooklyn and the team’s move to Los Angeles has been told many times and the debate will doubtless go on forever. It is beyond the scope of this essay, however, because even if the Dodgers remained in Brooklyn, they were going to leave Ebbets Field. The point of no return was reached on October 31, 1956, with the announcement that O’Malley had sold the ballpark to real estate developer Marvin Kratter for $3 million to be developed into apartments. Had the Dodgers stayed in Brooklyn, the 1960 demolition of the ballpark would have been delayed but not prevented […] and the Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957, before a crowd of 6,702.
Seats advertised as coming from Ebbets Field are available on the Web. At present writing (Thursday, June 6, 2024), these were available on eBay ($6,599.99 or Best Offer +$2.95 shipping):
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