Tag Archives: Chicago Cubs

The Craziest Hot Dogs in Professional Baseball (Major League Edition)

“Take me out to the barf game, take me out to the puke!”

~Your obnoxious seven-year-old nephew who, you have to admit, probably has a bright parody career ahead of him

messy hot dog

America invented most of the world’s best sports.  Football?  That was us.  Basketball?  Sure, it was by a Canadian, but only because he was being paid by the Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA when he came up with it, because Canadian dollars were still printed on tree bark at the time, and we were responsible for all the changes that make it recognizable as a sport today.  Soccer?  Nice try, not a real sport, next question.

But of all the excuses for young men (and women!) to vent out the aggression of youth in a competitive and potentially humiliating environment that has been birthed within these borders, only one sport is iconic enough to be known as our national pastime.  No, not Mixed Martial Arts, that’s a terrible guess, are you high right now?  We’re talking about baseball of course.

You might view baseball as a relic of a simpler age, when men were men, owners were horrific bigots, and amphetamines were just, everywhere, all the time, which would explain why the sport struggles in some markets to maintain its relevancy.  It’s a slow-moving game trying to make its way in a fast-paced world, and say what you will about heart palpitations but taking the majority of the workforce off of Speed in the 80’s didn’t really do much for the pace of the game.  Major League Baseball teams try to combat the issues implicit with asking some 40,000 Americans to sit very still for three or four hours by making a day at the ball game a full entertainment and gastronomical experience.  This involves a gallons of watered down beer and, more recently, absurd, amazing American culinary disasterpieces for us to shove in our faces and slink into our chairs to ride out our food coma contently watching yet another 1-2-3 inning.

Sure, we could go on about crazy nachos served in miniature baseball hats, or giant cups of frozen sugar (okay, so maybe malt cups aren’t exactly a new development) but let’s be real here.  This is America’s sport, we’re going to need to talk about America’s food.  America’s best, most absurdly adaptable, most occasionally unnecessarily expensive food.  Let’s get to it.

The Craziest Hot Dogs in Professional Baseball (Major League Edition)

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Bill Veeck Loved Midgets

“Midget!  Midget midget midget!”

~Bill Veeck


If there’s one complaint people have about baseball, it would be that it’s too straight laced.  That is, if they have a complaint about baseball.  That’s usually because baseball players only show a lot of effort for short periods of time before resting a while.  It’s the only sport that has a bench that doesn’t require a bench, because honestly, when was the last time you saw a guy walk to the dugout and need to rest his legs?

Photo unrelated

But if there was one man out there that understood how to jazz up Baseball and take an American sport even more American by adding something crazy, it would be the great Bill Veeck, a man who saw a sport that could be stuffy and uninviting and decided to liven the hell out of it, likely saying, “We gotta do something to make this game more exciting.  You know, something like a midget baseball player.  Well, not a midget baseball player, but you get the idea, something like that.”

“Dammit, fine let’s just go with it.”

Yes, Bill Veeck was a unique brand of MLB baseball team owner.  While some owners might have their team involved in messy divorce court proceedings, Veeck (“as in Wreck” as his autobiography so astutely put it) would do absurd promotion stunts (his ugly divorces very rarely involved the teams he owned).  As the last Baseball owner who was not independently wealthy, Bill Veeck had everything a true American could ask for.  A man who built himself from the ground up, lost a limb in the war, and caused a mass riot when he wanted to destroy as many Disco albums as possible.  Veeck was a man too great for embellishment, though we once heard that he could life a car over his head with one hand while juggling midgets with the other.  But only 3 midgets.  Like we said, we’re not going to embellish any of this.

So here’s the tale of the man with one leg and a love of midgets.

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Bobby Scales, Baseball Player/Superman

“I eat dingers for breakfast, and I steal bases to fall asleep.”

~Bobby Scales

Baseball stars (well, American born ones, anyway) cover a broad array of proudly American personality types.  There’s the overweight men who can throw a ball very fast and become millionaire professional athletes, the overweight men who can swing a stick very hard and become millionaire professional athletes, and others.  But one player, while not the most widely known baseball player, is by far the most American.

That is Chicago Cubs perennial minor leaguer, Bobby Scales.

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Chewing Gum, Surprisingly American, Reliably Delicious

“Chewing gum is a lot like heroin, since both are incredibly enjoyable.”

~William S. Burroughs


 Chewing gum is an enigmatic American invention.  While it combines ancient history, American ingenuity, and tooth decay, it is not considered to be as awesomely American as alligator wrestling or cage matches (or any combination of the two).  But, in reality, chewing gum is an underappreciated yet surprisingly American commodity.

First, ask yourself a question.  Who makes chewing gum?  Wrigley’s of course.  And where do the Chicago Cubs, America’s most American loveable losers play?  Wrigley Field.

Did you know:  Those two are named after the same fucking guy.

Once you pick up the pieces of your exploded cranium, the America Fun Fact of the Day presents to you…

Chewing Gum:  More American than your immigrant grandparents

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