Tigers Fans Start Drinking Young

You know your season is going bad when 7 year olds are drinking in the stands. 47 year old Tigers fan, Christopher Ratte lost custody of his son for a week because his 7 year old son was caught drinking a bottle of Mikes Hard Lemonade in the stands. Ratte's son was thirsty towards the end of a game and asked for a bottle of lemonade and Ratte obliged but he unknowingly purchased his son a bottle of "hard lemonade", not knowing that it contained any alcohol.

"I'd never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it," Ratte of Ann Arbor told [the reporter] sheepishly last week. "And it's certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old."

A security guard saw the boy drinking it, took the bottle away from the kid, scolded the parent, called the police over and took Ratte in for questioning for an hour while his son was taken to a hospital for observation. The child was then kept from Ratte and his wife for two days in foster care, then once released, it was another week before Ratte could go back to his house and be around his son.

Bit of an overreaction sure, but, sadly, the officials all pretty much followed the law on this one. Still though, quite a mess. Poor kid probably had no idea what was going on...and not because he was hittin the bottle hard. Apparently the kid didn't even get drunk. All of that and he didn't even get sauced? Methinks that 7 year old already has a pretty solid tolerance...or Mike's is just a weak excuse for an alcoholic beverage. I want to believe the former is true, but the reality is the latter.

Of course, if i were a fan of the Tigers right now, I would be tipping back as many beers as I could to make it through a game...oh wait, i'm a Nationals fan...they're so sad I'm drunk right now and its an off game. Go Nats!

From Detroit Free Press