Making a Name for Himself
Bob Donchez left the trading frenzy of Wall Street to become a beer man at Coors Field.
He’s happy, and he knows it.
“I left tens of thousands of dollars to create tens of thousands of smiles,” he said.
To fans of baseball’s Colorado Rockies, he’s known simply as “Bob the Beer Man,” a whimsical character he invented to amuse the masses.
“I’ve developed this shtick about this Disney-type character who entertains the crowd,” he said. “So many people go to work for 40 hours a week, and they get out to the ballpark and that’s their little escape. I just try to make it a bit more special.”
He cruises the aisles like a fan’s best bud. An anecdote dropped here, a question about the children there.
“I think what he does is, he’s here to add to the excitement of the baseball game,” said Jim Madsen, a devoted Rockies fan. “He’s up and down, he’s yelling. When you talk to him, he’s happy.”
When the Dodgers were in town late in the season, Donchez asked to see a fan’s identification. The hapless fan produced a California driver’s license. Donchez stood up, pointed to him and yelled: “Ladies and gentlemen, a Dodger fan! Right here!”
The section booed.
Donchez asked if he should charge the man double for his beer. The fans roared their approval.
But all’s well that ends well: The fan got a friendly pat on the shoulder, Donchez got his smiles.
Donchez earned his MBA in finance and marketing from Fordham University. He spent three years at IBM’s world financial headquarters before switching to Salomon Bros., one of the premier bond-trading houses and investment banks on Wall Street in the mid-1980s.
After working for seven years as an accountant and analyst on Wall Street, it was time for a change.
“It got to a point where I could have been pretty safe and secure, but there was more to life,” he said. “There was something about giving back and making life a little bit better for those around me.”
He came to Denver and began selling beer at the University of Colorado in the fall of 1992. The following spring, he was the first vendor hired by the expansion Colorado Rockies. His vendor badge number: 0001.
“I was signed before [Rockies players] David Nied, Dante Bichette and Eric Young, and for a lot less money, and I’m still around,” Donchez said.
Three years ago, he became an adjunct finance professor at the University of Colorado in nearby Boulder, where he is teaching a course this semester on financial markets and institutions. His students catch his routine at sporting events there too.
“I do the old Clark Kent/Superman routine,” he said. “I wear the eyeglasses and am dressed pretty conservatively at school. Then I get out to the ballpark and step into the phone booth and voila, I’m ‘Bob the Beer Man.’ ”
At Coors Field, he works the lower level, dispensing his cheer behind home plate. He also vends at the home games for the NFL’s Denver Broncos, hockey’s Colorado Avalanche and the NBA’s Denver Nuggets.
Donchez, who is married with two children, is so protective of the “Beer Man” phenomenon, he even filed a lawsuit in 1999 against Coors Brewing Co. for its advertisements involving a similar character. He claims he pitched the “Beer Man” character as a marketing tool in 1996, but Coors representatives weren’t interested.
In 1997, Coors began running its “beer man” ads.
“We just don’t think that there’s a real valid basis for the lawsuit,” said Aimee St. Clair, a Coors spokeswoman. “We think [beer man] is a generic term and not one that you can trademark and be in violation of that trademark.”
She said several beer man characters have been working at various stadiums since the early ‘80s.
The trial is expected to begin next year.
Donchez shares his vendor experiences in his book, “A View From the Stands: A Season with Bob the Beer Man.” It recounts incidents and accidents in the crowd and avoids descriptions of players and the game.
“The New York Times calls it ‘Great bathroom reading,’ ” he said, tongue-in-cheek. “I’m not sure what that means.”
