If you stop 50 people in the street and ask them how many drinks they think Harry Caray has had in his very interesting 83-year life, you’ll probably hear it. “a lot!” well… a lot
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But what if I tell you this there is actually a number. It’s not a number put together by someone who guessed the number of drinks Harry consumed by taking a day and multiplying out, but a number determined by Harry Caray. to himselfthe man who actually drank.
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In 1972, Harry Caray began documenting his elbow bending in a “Drinking Journal” that he planned to use for tax purposes.
Back in the day, you could deduct your 3-martini lunches from your taxes, so Harry figured if he documented every time he paid for a drink over the course of the year, he could write off those expenses on the spot of taxes Harry considered his drinking and carousing activities outside the stadium to be part of his general job.
For most people, this kind of scheme would never work, but it made sense for Harry Caray to try it.
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Harry’s drinking diary from 1972 reveals that he hopped for 288 consecutive days, which equates to 41 weeks, and could be found in a bar for 354 out of 365 days.
Anyone who thinks Harry’s drinking couldn’t be real and was just something to build and maintain an image (like Dean Martin for example) really couldn’t be more wrong. Looking at the numbers, Harry drank for about 65 of his 84 years.
After the drinking journal (or journals) were found in 2014, they were shared with various news and entertainment outlets, leading to a number of figures.
Thrillist.com says that Grant DePorter, editor of the newspaper and CEO of Harry Caray’s Restaurant Group, was told by Harry Caray that Caray had consumed more than 300,000 drinks in his lifetime, and 73,000 Budweisers over 41 years. That’s an average of 4.9 outbreaks per day.
So what about the other 24 years? Using the formula of 4.9 beers a day, that equates to 42,924 more beers. Thrillist.com:
THE GRAND TOTAL? 115,924 BEERS. Or to err on the safe side, given the year-to-year fluctuations in the consumption rate (not every year can support 288 drinking days like 1972), a more conservative estimate would be somewhere between 110,000 and 120,000 beers. Either way, that’s a lot of beer.
Here’s the most interesting aspect of Harry’s drinking: He drank more cocktails than beer
And what was Harry Caray’s favorite cocktail? It was a Bombay Sapphire martini. So let’s do the math and add things up.
If Harry was right when he said he had 300,000 drinks in his life, and of those 300,000, 115,294 were beers, that means he threw back 184,076 mixed drinks, which easily dwarfs the beer consumption. All in all, there was plenty of drink for one human being. How much?
When you average 300,000 drinks over a 65-year drinking period, you get 12.6 drinks a day!
Here’s one more fun fact about Harry Caray and a certain famous fan:
