Here I am at Shea Stadium on the first round of a beer-tasting tour of selected ballparks. It's the fourth inning, the sun is shining bright, and the grandstands in right are packed with fans slugging back the golden brew.

So I'm wondering about the guy next to me. He's already stacked up six jumbo cups and is flagging down a vendor for No. 7.

"Sure, I'm a little buzzed," he says, "but nothing to write home about." Yeah, I guess you could get a little buzz from 96 fluid ounces.
   
He says he's celebrating his 47th birthday. He looks as if he has decided to drink a pint for each year. He's wearing satin gym shorts, a big gold pinkie ring, and some morning-after stubble on his chin. No shirt.
   
"Guys come to the ballpark to watch baseball, look at girls, get a tan," he says. "Nobody's here to get drunk."
   
I ask him what brand he's drinking.
   
"It's beer," he says, troweling some Mexitan Dark Tanning Oil onto his chest. "What's the difference?"
   
How's it taste?
   
"Taste! Nobody tastes stadium beer. It tastes like nothing. It doesn't have a taste. Taste! I don't want taste. I want beer."
   
He's got a point. You don't often get much choice at ballparks. You want Pilsner Urquell, you have to send out for it. (Although Shea does stock Grolsch and Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen draft). Ballpark beer seems designed just to flow through you. It may, in fact, have important medicinal qualities in that it so successfully flushes out ballpark hotdogs. Ballpark beer is … well, it's wet.
   
At Wrigley Field in Chicago, they've got some real beer drinkers. My cousin Rick is one. He suggests we go slumming in the bleachers.

Cousin Rick tells me that to appreciate bleacher beer I've got to look like a bleacher bum. He outfits me in a Hawaiian shirt with a hideous life of its own, and jams that would have made Oedipus grateful to be blind. No one else in the bleachers looks remotely as stylish.

The Cubs are playing the Dodgers. "L.A. used to have a perfect pitcher to drink beer to," says the bum behind us. "Know who I mean?" He means Tim Belcher.

It's hot. It's humid. It's time for an Old Style. Cousin Rick takes a sip. "It reminds me of British lager," he says.

How's that?

"It's lukewarm."

We order a couple of Budweisers, which are only slightly colder than our hotdogs. At six bucks, they're also exactly half the price of the large cup of Miller Lite I had at Dodger Stadium in April.

This Bud tastes flat, like it's been sitting in Al Capone's vault since Prohibition. (Maybe they should have left it in Spuds MacKenzie). I don't get it. Why can't a Bud in the bleachers taste like a Bud at the bar?

My Bud seems to get sweeter by the inning. I gaze into the cup and discover that the seven-year-old on my right has been decorating it with caramel corn. I'm reminded of the national brew of Zambia. In the capital of Lusaka, before opening a bottle you're supposed to turn it upside down to check for "floaters." That's a Zambian euphemism for beer bugs.

Nearer to home in Philadelphia, I cajole my oldest daughter, Gogo, into joining an expedition to Citizens Bank Park. She agrees to go if I promise to buy her a soft pretzel.

The pretzel is soft and salty and soggy, like it's been soaked in a bathtub overnight. At McNally's tavern at the end of Ashburn Alley in the outfield concourse I get a Rolling Rock, which is a formidable color Gogo calls "hot yellow." I wonder for a moment what they do with the bathwater after they've soaked the pretzels. We return to our seats, where I follow up with a Coors Light, a name I've always considered a redundancy.

Next stop: Oriole Park, where the beer has more bad hops than the Orioles infield. The last time I went to a game in Baltimore was back in 1991, and the woman in the next seat was slugging back a Busch. "It's a lot like our president," she told me. "No charisma." I ordered a Natural, but liked it no better than the movie.

Nowadays, the O's carry neither. I chose another brand, which will remain nameless. No, I'll call it Basebrau because it tastes like it was strained though a second baseman's sock. This beer is dead. According to the fan in the Ripken jersey on my left, local custom demands that you transfer the beer from a ballpark wax cup to a Big Gulp plastic cup from 7-Eleven. I try this with the Basebrau, but I can still taste the sock.

I ask Ripken, What's wrong with ballpark beer?

"Aaah, it's watered down," he says with apparent authority.

Well, that sounds vaguely like a conspiracy, so the next day I call the government. I phone the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and ask if ballpark beer really is watered down. No, says a G-Man: It's not watered down. It's not the wax cups. Or keg tampering. Or even inferior brew. "It's the loss of carbonation," he states firmly. "Carbonation gives beer its bite. The longer it sits around, the more bubbles die." And when the fizz goes, so does the sparkle.

My odyssey ends in Boston, where I confront the unbearable lightness of beering. Bud Light. Miller Lite. Coors Light. "Get your diet beer here," chirps a Fenway Park vendor.

They stop vending beer after the seventh. By the bottom of the inning, a loop of fans threads from a beer stand to the men's room and back again.

A fellow named Leo observes this configuration from the railing. He's clutching a couple of full cups he never even bothers to sip.

Leo explains why fans buy ballpark beer. "They just like the feel of the cup in their hand," he says. "The taste is no good, but the feel is still alright."