"Mabel Black Label!"

Age discrimination suit tossed after Mets beer vendor, 85, is replaced by 75-year-old
BY JOSE MARTINEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, February 27, 2010Shea Stadium beer vendor Mildred Block, 85, sued company Aramark after being replaced by a 75-year-old woman. (Simmons/News)

An 85-year-old woman who sold suds at Mets games was crying in her beer Friday after a judge junked her age discrimination suit against the company that replaced her with a 75-year-old.

Mildred Block sued concession giant Aramark last year, charging it illegally yanked her from a lucrative beer stand during the last season at Shea Stadium.

"Everyone was like, 'Mildred, what happened?'" said the New Jersey woman. "I worked there so many years, and I think I'm an excellent worker."

Block said she was marooned at a Shea booth where tips were scarce compared to the right field stand where she'd been for nearly two decades, pocketing $40 in tips on good days.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joan Lobis sided with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which determined it was "highly unlikely" that Aramark had discriminated.

The decision pointed out the company replaced Block - who still works for Aramark at the new Citi Field - with Gloria Smith, 75.

Block and her son, Marty, accused the commission of a "one-sided, abbreviated, incomplete and improper investigation."

Marty Block, who started working at Shea in 1973, claimed an Aramark manager told him, "Your mother is an antique dinosaur, old cripple that we do not want at Citi Field."

Aramark declined comment. In court papers, the company said it received complaints about long lines at the stand where Mildred Block worked with a male partner 40 years her junior. Block insisted she's still good enough for the beer-stand bigs, and that she "never made a mistake with the change."

"I couldn't go any faster than he served the beer," she said.

jmartinez@edit.nydailynews.com