Ballparkfood

It was the perfect day for my first baseball game, with a Santa Fe blue sky and well-placed white, mightily-jowled clouds.  This was old school Tiger Stadium, where an usher walked you to your seats, and draped a canvas cover over the slatted chair that would have otherwise been tough to endure for the two hours baseball games lasted at the time.  The cover was Carhartt gold brown, with a smell all tents had back then, when canvas never completely dried.

That scent was soon joined by another, as a burly-armed vendor (many of whom had—gasp—tattoos!) ambled up the stairs.  Decked out in a red-and-white striped shirt and matching paper hat, he dropped the half-moon metallic vat that wrapped round his waist, jimmied the top open with a flick of the short barbecue fork he was holding, and behold—a sea of steamy hot water with a prism of floating grease. 

He skewered a bloated, boiled hot dog with the same fork, while his other hand grabbed a bun and split it open with his thumb. Enfolding the dog in the bun with the same hand that held the fork, the other hand grabbed a wooden ice cream spoon leaning against a cardboard container of bright yellow mustard.

The scent of the slightly-warmed mustard would have been enough for me to slather it on a filet mignon, if that’s what he was serving, but it was just as perfect with the hot dog.  Mom boiled hot dogs at home, often (love ya mom) without the same effect— a boiled baseball dog with stadium mustard brought heaven that much closer to this world.

Seventeen years later, my uncle somehow convinced my father to give up his company’s World Series tickets so he could go.  We climb up to the second deck—not the usual seats my father’s company had, but this is the World Series—and en route, we stop at a stand the lower deck apparently doesn’t have for an Italian sausage, with grilled onions and peppers. 

I want to remember brown mustard was available for this amazing nosh, but the smell of those onions is the real memory.  Like the yellow mustard, no place outside the stadium can replicate it.  Caramelize to your heart’s content, chefs; real grilled onions are ballpark exclusive, made by a chain-smoking, hair-netted woman named Eileen.

Fifteen years pass, and Tiger Stadium is hosting its last season, victim to a newer stadium with the nerve to offer skyboxes and seats that aren’t behind iron beam pillars.  My Dad’s company now has seats on the first base line, and they are the last row in the Tigers Den, a perk designed to appease corporate clients until the new stadium was built.  A waitress dressed in black and white (no striped shirt, no tattoos) comes by with—I still shudder—a menu, and asks to take my order, including alcoholic drinks.

My wife is thrilled. “Look” says she, perusing, “a Caesar salad!”

I’d like to think I hadn’t raised my voice in our time together before then, but the honor of baseball was on the line.  I grabbed—and I mean, grabbed—the menu from her hands and growled “This is Tiger Stadium.  You can get a Caesar salad at the new ballpark, but today, you’re having a hot dog.”

She begrudgingly let me have my way (she later got ice cream and caramel corn as a consolation), and as I inhaled the magnificent yellowness of its topping, I wondered if the mustard at the new park would smell the same.

Happily, it does not.

Dilemma

She really loves me
And that is why
Though it was hard
She pointed out that
Yelling at my children
Over losing their temper
Was an oxymoron brought to life.

Marry well, my friends.

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