Prohibitions and D.C. Baseball

Prohibition disclaimer at a Prague bar.

So while all my friends and family back in the Washington, D.C., area are celebrating the Nationals clinching the first Major League Baseball playoff appearance for a Washington team since 1933, we are in the midst of something here in the Czech Republic that ended that same year back home ... prohibition.

A couple people in the country here apparently poisoned some liquor by adding methanol, which quickly spread and over two dozen people died as a result. The Czech government responded earlier this month by imposing a ban on liquor with more than 20 percent alcohol, where the methanol had been found, a ban which will go until the middle of October. In essence, you can now get a beer or a shooter with very little liquor in it, but nothing else.

Very scary, very heartbreaking, and, on a much smaller scale, also very ironic that the Nats would go 69 years between playoff berths, spanning the end of prohibition in the United States (which was repealed by the 21st Amendment in December 1933) to the beginning of prohibition here. I'm no baseball sabermatrician or uber stat geek, but I found that at least somewhat interesting, and worthy of a blog on a quiet Wednesday afternoon.

The prohibition here has had a big impact on an already struggling economy, with the country losing 25 million Czech crowns (koruna), which is equaled to a little less than $1.3 million, each day during the ban. Shelves at grocery stores, markets and bars where bottles of liquor are usually kept are now bare, and the night life isn't what it was in past months as the non-beer drinkers are staying home. The dry period has had an especially large impact on the Absinthe industry, with the factory just outside of Prague nearly grinding to a halt and the museum where you can buy Absinthe in various forms and flavors down near Old Town now a ghost town, much to the disappointment of a group of Virginia Tech students I took there last week that had hopes of picking some up.

You Nats fans enjoy the last handful of games before the postseason begins, carry on with that Natitude, keep your fingers crossed that Teddy will win a race before the season ends, and don't forget to bring up the Stephen Strasburg debate, it's been like 15 minutes since anyone's mentioned it. Meantime, I'll be tuning in via MLB.tv, and hopefully will be able to celebrate an NLCS victory with a few shots of Slivovitsa or Absinthe before returning to the states for the last couple games of the World Series.