Giants Stadium — the old one under which Jimmy Hoffa is buried — had a checkered Monday Night Football history.

Against the Buffalo Bills on one Halloween, fans ignited their seats in the upper deck, only to put out the fires with recycled beer. The alcoholic beverage became the culprit for most of the Giants Stadium woes, and it certainly ruined the first — and last game — I ever watched from the upper deck.

The third deck was especially raucous. The J-E-T-S chants so common on football Sundays took on a heightened vigor on Monday nights when fans would have extended hours to get oiled up. Stadium management deemed that no beer could be sold after the third quarter, and that policy was changed to halftime after Buffalo Bills players complained of being hit in the head with D-cell batteries.

Some close family friends had season tickets for years and offered them up on a Monday night against hated Miami. Dan Marino was still in his prime and the Jets were retiring Joe Namath’s jersey that night as Dad negotiated the daunting task of the New Jersey Turnpike.

A chill hung in the air as we climbed to our seats many rows into the upper deck endzone sections. The chants began, and I joined in loudly.

At halftime, the man next to us went to the concession stand. He returned with four jumbo beers, which he placed under his seat. To the concession stand again, back with four jumbo beers. Preparation for the fourth-quarter rule, we surmised.

The oiled-up fans became more and more oiled up.

Soon those behind us began a shouting match with those in front of us. The language, to which I later became very accustomed, would have made a sailor blush. Dad’s comfort level with the evening began to wane; it was still the third quarter.

The verbal jabs got worse until someone from above finally had enough of those below. A jumbo beer floated through the air like a pass by Namath when Dad covered the team as a sportswriter for the New Haven Register in Connecticut.

It missed the intended target. Dad and I were the unintended targets.

“That’s it,” he said as he wiped beer from his brow and led me down the stairs and out of the stadium.

“Driving home,” he told me years later, “I was scared to death we would get pulled over because I smelled like a brewery — and you did, too.”

But we didn’t get pulled over.

We also never went back to Giants Stadium.

Tonight will be my first return to an NFL upper deck as the Saints play the Chargers in the Superdome.

Dad politely turned down the invite.

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Sean P. Murphy can be reached at smurphy@vicksburgpost.com