Archives for the 'baseball' tag
Sausage-Gun Fail
The comedy troupe that is the Washington Natinals baseball club just keeps serving up more embarrassments. The WaPo reports on the latest, which involves the malfunction of the team mascot’s sausage-launching gun.
[Mascot] Screech came out on a Segway, as he always does for this promotion, and set up shop down the right field line. (The sausage shooter is used irregularly, but is a season-long promotion that has been used before and is scheduled to be used again.) This time, though, the sausages (wrapped in bun, foil and T-shirt, along with a flyer) weren’t soaring into the stands with the majesty of a Roethlisberger bomb. This was the Danny Wuerffel version.
“Every time you would see one fire, you would almost see shotgun pellets of stuff come out of it, stuff would explode everywhere,” said Alex Zeese, who was sitting in section 222. “A guy in front of me caught one, he opens it up, the whole thing was just crushed, and the sausage casing was pretty much the only thing left. It had been torn down the center, all you saw was little bits of meat stuck to the casing. It was basically gutted. I don’t think anyone would eat that. I’m just glad there was no mustard in that stuff.”
John Scholle, sitting in right field, reported grounds crew members scurrying onto the field to retrieve wayward bread.
“Big old chunks,” he noted. “They were very clearly exploding as they were shot out, and we could easily see the bun and foil that were laying on the warning track.”
There was at least one report of a sausage flying into the Phillies bullpen, to great amusement of the residents, although the fans were more frequently in the trajectory.
“You could just see stuff exploding over the crowd, like confetti raining down,” said Timmermeyer, who was sitting in 129, behind the Nats’ dugout. “You could just see the bread raining down on the people. And one time you could see the T-shirt leave and the bun was still in there, and I don’t think Screech saw that, so he put another one in and then you got double-bun in there exploding.”
More here. In addition to the whole Natinals jersey mess last month, more scandals from the worst and least loved team in baseball here and here.
Chicago Baseball Stadiums Move Beyond ‘Puny’ Footlong
As we already knew, and as Wednesday’s Top Chef served once more to remind us, Chicago sports fans can eat. As if the Fridge asked for manna, and heaven rained it down, both of the area’s Major League Baseball teams are now serving two-foot-long sandwiches:
At Wrigley Field, a two-foot-long Italian beef feeds two to four people and costs $18. Fans can find it at the Italian Hot Spot concession stand in the left field concourse.
Not to be outdone, U.S. Cellular Field is touting its $14 Doubleheader Dog, a 24-inch hot dog, as the first of its kind in the major leagues. It’s sold in the club level Southside Grill.
[...]
Also new at Wrigley this season:
• Tallgrass Beef hamburgers. The beef, named for Chicago broadcaster and rancher Bill Kurtis’ company, is from grass-fed cattle and all the rage among eco-conscious restaurants. The burgers are part of the Chef’s Harvest Table buffet in the Stadium Club.
• “Throwback” menu. Available in the suites, the menu offers comfort foods such as meatloaf with mashed potatoes, fried chicken and watermelon slices.
Get the lowdown on pretty much every ballpark in America, foodwise and otherwise, here.
More from Crispy on baseball food here.
Crispy Podcast Episode 1
In the inaugural episode of our weekly podcast, we discuss Paul Prudhome dodging bullets, the Amy Winehouse saga, the merits of lettuce and mayonaise on pizzza, the Nats going BYOF, food safety regs, and the week in bacon. We also recommend Ciao Bella gelato, which is insanely great.
Please take a listen and post a comment letting us know what you think. We apologize in advance for the audio quality, which is a little chintzy, but hey, it’s our first time and it will get better. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show for free. You can grab the RSS feed or click here to subscribe in iTunes. That way you’ll get it every week.
Glorious Foodie News as DC Baseball Goes BYOF
With baseball season set to kick off in the coming days, there’s no time like the present for teams to debut great new foods.
My adopted hometown Washington Nationals — I’ve adopted the town, not the team, which is moving into a new (taxpayer financed = boo!) stadium — aren’t just upping their food quality.
They’re also shockingly inviting ballpark diners to go the byof route.
There’s a big change awaiting baseball fans at the Washington Nationals new ballpark after years at RFK Stadium. The new Nationals Park is going to allow fans to bring their own food.
So if you don’t feel like paying $6.50 for a chili dog or $5 for fries, you won’t have to sneak in your own snack.
[...]
Fans will also be allowed to bring in water bottles that are less than a liter in size.
Holy crap! This is a baseball & food-lover’s dream! This might be the greatest sports food news… ever. Seriously. I could bring a backpack filled with hot dogs and a water bottle filled with white wine or beer. This is so great it makes the world’s greatest burger seem pedestrian.
