THE BEER BEAT: Cincinnati area lagers during Reds baseball on Thursday, June 8. I hear they serve Bud Light at Louisville Bats games.

On Thursday, the Cincinnati Reds hosted the St. Louis Cardinals at Great American Ball Park.

For me, day baseball is the bee's knees, and I gratefully accepted Mark's invitation to join him and Graham for a 12:35 p.m. "getaway game" (afterwards the Reds were to fly to Los Angeles to begin a road trip). The Reds won, completing a rare home sweep of the Cardinals.

We parked in Newport on the Kentucky side, just a block away from the Hofbrauhaus. After a delicious Schwarzbier and pretzels in the Biergarten, it was a 25-minute walk across the Purple People Bridge to the stadium.

Thursday was a humidity-free afternoon, with temperatures in the mid-70s, variable cloudiness and a breeze here and there. Just glorious for baseball.

Admittedly I didn't undertake a meticulous examination of the beer selections at Great American Ball Park. Therein lies a digression.

Honestly, 15 years or more spent highlighting the myriad deficiencies of Louisville Bats management with respect to generally truncated local "craft" beer prospects has worn me to a nub. It's been at least three years since I bothered attending a Bats game for precisely this reason, and I can't be bothered to so much as complain.

Philistines then, now and forever, but look -- new for 2017!

Craft Beer Friday

New for 2017! Enjoy your choice of a variety of regional, local and national craft beers located at the Craft Beer Friday portable on the main concourse behind section 127. Each month will feature a new craft beer.

How very avant-garde of them. Next thing you know, Bats management will admit to the existence of iPhone selfies and have a special commemorative event -- or maybe it's finally time for a Mike Calise Bobblehead Night.

At the same time, periodic visits to major league parks in recent years have convinced me that in the big leagues, they're getting it. In Minneapolis in 2014 and Cleveland last year, local "craft" choices were many and varied, if predictably pricey.

On Thursday in Cincinnati, with exemplary seats down the line behind first base, there actually was an entertaining game to watch on a beautiful afternoon. At the risk of heresy, beer almost was secondary.

Still, I did some foraging.

Just behind us on the concourse was evidence of what happens when AB InBev hoovers the "craft" options and runs them through the Grand Trojan Zombie Filter. At first glance, it's a decent enough selection, but with all the profits going to the wrong shareholders.

Sorry, but AB InBev has enough money. They don't need any of mine.

Acknowledging that most of the cash spent on a $14 stadium beer is going to concessionaires and wholesalers -- in fact, I believe one of those ten commandments on display at the nearby Ark Encounter reads to this hallowed effect -- I'd rather it go for a local beer.

Blessedly, there were options. Obviously, Bud Light isn't local, though the others are.

It's called the Brewery District, located on the main concourse, situated behind home plate. The layout is logical, with Cincinnati-brewed beers on one side and national/international choices on the other.

For the record, I had only a couple of beers. Both were good, and I was satisfied.

1. Listermann Brewing Company's Losantiville (or Losantaville, or Losantville) Pre-Prohibition Lager, with as many as three alternate spellings and almost no on-line information (grr), although it was tasty.
2. Christian Moerlein Helles Lager, which I found exceptional and would seek again.

Next up: Cubs versus Rays in Chicago on July 5. My last time in Wrigley Field was during the Reagan Administration. Is there anything better than Old Style there now?

To hell with this. I'm going to a ballgame.

Road trip!

Cincinnati Reds vs. St. Louis Cardinals, at Great American Ball Park, June 8, 2017

I love day games.

I love day games on a Thursday in June when the high temperature is only 76 degrees.

I love them even more when someone else drives. Thanks, Mark. I'm taking a vacation day from blogging. If there's to be an ON THE AVENUES column this week, it will come on Friday.

Or whenever.

Now for the important news: What to Drink at a Cincinnati Reds Game, and also this:

Expect to see many of the same breweries as last year, but they'll change the offerings up a bit. In moves fitting for a baseball stadium, MadTree's PsycHOPathy will be replaced with the brewery's Rounding Third Red IPA, and Rhinegeist's Truth with its Hustle. In addition to those, you'll also find offerings from several other local breweries: Blank Slate, Braxton, Listermann, Moerlein, Mt. Carmel and Rivertown.

Night of the living plastic bottled swill Hell … but a good time for the discerning.

Imagine that you’ve paid the very reasonable price of $80 for a chartered bus seat, a ticket in the right field stands to watch the Chicago Cubs vs. the homestanding Cincinnati Reds, a pre-game picnic meal of barbecue and the fixings, and all the craft draft beer you can drink before and after the game.

Imagine that the three craft beers on tap on the bus are BBC APA (Main & Clay), Browning’s She-Devil IPA, and Browning’s Helles, the latter a German-style golden lager perfectly familiar to any person who has ever suckled an ice-cold Bud Light.

Imagine that such an unprecedented deal isn’t quite good enough for you, so you ignore the craft beer you’ve already paid for, pack a cooler with canned and bottled swill, throw back a dozen or more overpriced “waters,” as Sergio would call them, during the ballgame, and at a moment of supreme self-revelation during the journey home, begin belting out an off-key version of the best-forgotten, hoary seventies paean to piddling Parrotland, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw” – all the while believing that in your choice of beer, music and life, you’re being somehow clever and the life of the party.

I can’t imagine it, although I experienced it on Saturday.

However, it is my pleasure to report that entirely apart from redneck contingents originating in my (sighhh) home town of New Albany, there is good beer to be found at the Hofbrauhaus Newport, and even at Great American Ball Park itself. Within 100 yards of our seats at the home field of the Reds, I found Great Lakes Burning River Pale Ale, BarrelHouse Red Legg and an unidentified Flying Dog, along with a Red Hook IPA -- all ridiculously priced at $7.25 per plastic cup, but at least bearing tangible sign of hops and hope.

Meanwhile, mainstream America supped predictably at the altar of mainstream plastic bottles as the Reds bowed unconvincingly to the Cubs by an 8-1 score before a sellout “home” crowd of 42,500, of whom at least six of ten were Cubs, not Reds, supporters.

That’s surreal, but not as surreal as the bizarro-world spectacle of swill-hounds eschewing all-inclusive craft beer for the nadir of American brewing. Might I have been able to assist by providing salt, limes and other irrelevancies?

Verily, I should be used to it by now, but there are times when New Albany can really get to a guy ... and follow him back and forth during an otherwise marvelous break.