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LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Time now for StoryCorps. For 50 years, this voice has been a constant at Baltimore Orioles home games.
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CLARENCE HASKETT: Beer man, beer man. Anybody need a brew (ph)? Hey. Beer man, beer man, anybody need a beer?
FADEL: Clarence Haskett, also known as Fancy Clancy, has been a vendor at Orioles games since 1974. Haskett came to StoryCorps with fellow beer vendor Jerry Collier to remember how it all began.
HASKETT: My very first day. I was still in high school, and I don't know why I remember this, but I made $8.25.
JERRY COLLIER: I met you probably the second day of my new job where I was a beer vendor when I was 19-years-old, and you just crushed it. When I looked around the ballpark, there was this ray of sunshine everywhere you look, a guy who outworked people, who outloved all the customers more than anybody else. And I said, that's who I want to be like.
HASKETT: But see, I had little secrets, though. I used to move quicker than a lot of the other vendors because I was a sprinter in college. Another thing, you know, I had the gift of gab. I used to do rhymes. So that helped me out.
COLLIER: Give me one of your rhymes.
HASKETT: Well, back in the old days, I used to use this one a lot. Hey, empty your pockets, put your money in your hand, here's Clancy, your beer man.
COLLIER: (Laughter).
HASKETT: So, you know, I used to do little things like that. And all the vendors that we work with, all of us had some type of a personality for doing something.
COLLIER: And if you go into the stadium and you're No. 1, you have incredible pressure to be a selling machine.
HASKETT: The way that I look at my job as a vendor, my mindset is I'm a professional athlete. I have to stay in shape. I have to train during the off season because vendors running around with straps around their neck, that's only on television commercials. Good vendors pick up their case and they carry it.
COLLIER: It's consuming.
HASKETT: Yeah.
COLLIER: It's in your soul. Put it this way. Both of us, when it came to our wedding, how did we plan our wedding?
HASKETT: Around the Orioles games.
COLLIER: When the Orioles were out of town (laughter).
HASKETT: Yep.
COLLIER: You know, Clancy, you epitomize to me and so many people all that's right in the world. If it's a rain out at the Oriole game and you only sell two cases of beer, in the big scheme of life, that's not a problem. And I think that's more than the rhymes and all the rest. You're larger than life in a lot of ways.
HASKETT: I can always go somewhere and get a free beer from somebody.
COLLIER: (Laughter).
HASKETT: I can go in a restaurant or a bar that I've never been in before. There's always somebody knew who I was. So I definitely shake a lot of hands. And as long as I'm still healthy, I know I got another good 10 years.
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FADEL: Clarence Haskett with his friend and fellow beer vendor Jerry Collier, in Baltimore. Fancy Clancy is working his 51st season with the Orioles. Their interview will be archived at the Library of Congress. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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