Where do you go to games? When I get up at the end of a Nationals game, the floor is loaded with peanut shells, beer bottles, nacho trays, napkins, etc. It’s not pretty but bottlecaps are the least of their worries.
At RFK they take the top off of water bottles when you buy them at the counter. T hey told me it was so people wouldn’t throw them on the field. But when I bought a bottle of water from a vendor in the stands, I got the bottle intact.
As a former beer vendor for the Texas Rangers I think all the above reasons have merit.
[ol]
[li]throwing a bottle with a cap on will hurt more than if the cap is off as some of the liquid will undoubtedly sling out of the container[/li][li]people will find a way to piss in container if they can put a lid on it.[/li][li]cleaning up a bottle of soda with a cap on is a LOT more work. It weighs a lot more and is more difficult to wash out with a power hose.[/li][li]bottle caps are difficult to clean up, even with pressure hoses, it’s easy to leave a bottle cap.[/li][li]You always have to add one extra bullet as a reminder for the item that was forgotten.[/li][/ol]
Another WAG: to stop you from bringing in soda? If an usher notices you with a bottle of soda with a cap on it, or a soda bottle cap under your seat, he’s going to have a good suspicion that you brought it in with you instead of buying it there.
Shea Stadium has the same policy, but I can’t figure out why. It can’t be to keep them off the floor, keep you from throwing a full bottle or to somehow force you to buy soda or water- because they let you bring in plastic bottles from outside with the caps still on them.
Below is the response I got from guest services.
(The Blue Jays play in the same stadium.)
“On behalf of the Toronto Blue Jays, thank you for your email. It is a
policy of ours to take the top off the bottles for safety reason. By
taking the tops off we help prevent fans from throwing the bottles which
with water or pop still in them could seriously hurt someone. Taking the
tops off is just a preventative measure we take so that incidents like
this do not occur.”
Those of you, who guessed to prevent people from throwing them, win the prize. I will be mailing each of you a bottle of pop. Sans cap, of course, so it will be empty when it arrives.
Bah, I’m going to chuck one anyway at the next game, just to prove it can be done.
Canada. We’re much tidier here.
I can’t say anything about SkyDome, but I first saw this policy at a stadium in North Carolina five years ago. (Concertgoers said it was to keep people from throwing the bottles.) It’s spread since then, illogical as it is.
They did this at the ‘company picnic’ at Disneyland a few years ago. Someone told me that it was to discourage people from going to a water fountain and refilling their bottles, so that they’d have to shell out $X for a new bottle of water. Seems a little strange. You can still fill your bottle. But I suppose one is more likely to throw a bottle away when getting on a ride if there’s no cap on it.
:shrug:
I had this very question at Giant Stadium, home of the Hershey Bears hockey team.
The concessionnaire I talked to said that, during hockey games, fans tended to throw caps onto the ice. This somehow melts the ice irregularly, and players can trip over the caps or the dents with their skates; the caps can also cut into the ice, damaging the surface. The policy is applied uniformly for all events, even those that don’t require an ice rink. (I was there for a live show that was on the bare concrete floor.)
Having looked up the SkyDome, I’ll bet there’s another reason that the PR people didn’t mention. The edges of plastic bottle caps are sharp. If they land edge down, they will damage the turf, especially if a someone steps on them.
Robin
There is no ice at the SkyDome. It’s a baseball/football stadium.
The Astroturf is tough. They play football on it after all. There is no way you could damage it with a plastic cap.