The raucous fans who populate Yankee Stadium’s bleachers should return to form this season, now that the team has lifted its nine-year prohibition on performance-enhancing suds.
Beer was banned in Section 39 at the old Stadium in 2000 to tame the sometimes overly passionate Bleacher Creatures, but with the move to the new ballpark, the taps will be turned on once again, a team official told The Post.
No beer vendors will come through Section 203, but fans will be permitted to purchase 12-ounce beers for $6 in the stadium and take them back to their seats or imbibe at the new Bleacher Cafe.
“The good news is we can drink again; the bad news is I’m going to be spending a lot more money, I guess,” said “Sheriff Tom” Brown, 40, a Creature since 1993.
Bleacher fans were quarantined from the rest of the old stadium, but the team is letting the creatures out of their cages and giving them more access.
“We would go to other stadiums and be, like, ‘Wow! You don’t need a visa to go to the other side of the ballpark,’ ” Mike Donahue, 41, said. “We’re finally citizens again. They took down the wall.”
The main effect of the prohibition was to turn the bleachers into a speakeasy, Donahue said.
“Now we are going to retire all of our old ingenious ways of smuggling beer into the stadium,” he said.
“We’d go into a deli, and they’d make us a hero with fresh Arthur Avenue bread, hollow it out and put four beer cans inside. The guy would wrap it up and write ‘ham and cheese’ on it.”
In fact, alcohol never really stopped being sold in the bleachers, Brown said.
“This one guy would sell those airline-size liquor bottles out of a bathroom stall, like a drug dealer,” he said.
“The big problem of the ban was that everyone would sober up by the fifth inning and start to feel horrible — we are just not as funny anymore.”
Because of the ban, many Creatures would not arrive until well after the first pitch, choosing instead to stay in the bars for the start of the game, “Bald Vinny” Milano, 34, said.
“There is something to be said for a cold frosty one on a hot July day, and the ban had been a turnoff for a lot of people,” he said.