A cool breeze came off the lake, the sun set in a blue September sky, the Yankees played in Comiskey Park, and vendor Rich Harris cleared $150 in one game selling beer to the fans.
“I know I sound like an old-timer talking about the good old days, but this strike has got me thinking how much better the old days really were–at least for vendors,” says Harris, who’s been a vendor since 1983. “Maybe guys like me are the last of a breed.”
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Harris got into the business for the purest of reasons–he loves baseball. “This is the best way I could think of to be around the game. I grew up in a courtyard apartment on Belmont near Broadway, not far from Wrigley Field. I listened to Jack Brickhouse broadcasts all the time. He’s the best, I can’t believe they let him go. He’s so much better than Harry Caray, who’s a Cardinal fan and a carpetbagger. Don’t get me started on him. I used to go to 20 games a year as a kid. I was a fanatic Cub fan, but I was not a White Sox hater. Cubs fans are more reasonable, more human, in that regard. We don’t need the Sox to lose in order to be happy.
So they went to the headquarters of the Service Employees Union and added their names to the waiting list. In a few weeks they got their call. “They started me off selling peanuts and Coke,” says Harris. “This was in the summer of ’83, a perfect time to get into the business. Both teams were starting to draw bigger crowds, and the White Sox were winning. By the end of the summer I was selling beer, which is where the real money is made. I loved it from the start.”
In the early 1980s vendors got as much as 18 percent for every sale and could expect to make as much as $800 a week. A few years ago the Cubs sliced the take to 12 percent. It’s now at about 10 percent, which means they have to sell more beer to make as much money. “Basically, what happened is that every time they raised the price of beer they cut our commission,” says Jackanicz. “The money went somewhere, but it sure didn’t go to us.”
Harris says he’s anxious for the season to resume although the strike has dimmed his love for the game. “I’ll never support management over a union, but it’s hard for me to get worked up over these players,” says Harris. “It’s not even a real strike. It’s more of a power struggle. In a real strike workers have trouble feeding their families. These ball players are out playing golf. The guys getting hurt are, of course, the vendors who need this job to make a living.”
