Without Beer, Infield Was Less Filling

They threw a hell of an infield party at Pimlico Race Course yesterday. Too bad nobody showed up.

Normally, you have, what, 60,000 beered-up fans shoehorned into the infield for the Preakness?

Saturday, there was a fraction of that.

Saturday, you could have landed planes out there, it was so empty.

In one of the great Baltimore protests of all time, the sweltering masses rose up as one and thundered: You won't let us bring beer to your party? Fine, we won't show up at all. See how you like that.

Me, I happen to think Preakness officials made the right call prohibiting folks from bringing in their own beer. Look, things were getting completely out of hand.

People were getting hit with full cans of beer thrown by drunks. Fights were breaking out. Women were being groped.

The place had taken on all the calm of a Mike Tyson pub crawl.

But, boy, the ban sure did chill the party, didn't it?

Sure, there was still plenty to do in the infield to kill time before Rachel Alexandra's thrilling victory in the Preakness Stakes over Mine That Bird, the spirited Kentucky Derby winner.

The Hooters swimsuit contest was a class act, as always.

The sumo wrestling featured the usual sweaty fat guys throwing each other around, which you can see almost every night in Fells Point when the bars let out.

There was an air guitar contest and NASCAR simulator and the Skoal Zone, where, in a nice thumbs-up to the American Cancer Society, a sign said: "Show a pack of cigarettes, get a free gift!"

There was even the great Texas boogie band ZZ Top, whose members have beards older than most of those in the infield crowd yesterday.

But the vast emptiness of the infield was an absolutely incredible sight to veteran Preakness-goers.

At 1 in the afternoon, track officials were privately estimating that only a few thousand revelers were out in the grassy oval.

By post time for the Preakness, the crowd had grown larger, but not by that much.

Clearly, all the rock bands and oxygen bars and NASCAR simulators weren't going to pull in the crowds this day.

"[People] didn't give it a chance," said Bob Leffler, president of the ad agency for the track. "This is the best [infield] experience we've given them in 10 years."

"It was time for a change," Maryland Jockey Club president Tom Chuckas said of the BYOB ban. "We tried to upgrade the experience for our guests."