By Carl Crawford
For my tenth birthday, my grandfather got me the Ken Burns documentary, Baseball. I do not know why my grandfather decided that a Ken Burns documentary was an appropriate gift for a child; I assume it was something he thought he might find of use during his infrequent visits to Vermont, where I was raised.
Despite the awkwardness of getting a DVD box set as an elementary schooler, I loved it. I loved the stories, the legends, the fables of players spun throughout. I loved the many Burns idiosyncrasies that I was introduced to throughout its 10-part run: the slow zooms from people of interest; the pans from one subject to another inside a photo; the constant narration from different, often recognizable voices. It introduced me to a love and lore of the game that was so much richer than I could have ever imagined, showing me how a Civil War sideshow grew into a global phenomenon.
For all the reverence and glory he puts upon America’s pastime, Burns could never have predicted the way things would change in the years following Baseball’s 1994 release. Burns's focus remains solely on the game within the lines, with all the various digressions still stemming from and ultimately returning to America’s pastime. But I don’t think Burns's heavy-handed story of a persevering sport could have found any narrative room for discussion of my favorite excuse for a ballgame: Hot Dog Hysteria.
Hot Dog Hysteria is a promotional night at Centennial Field in Burlington, Vermont, when you can buy one hot dog for 25 cents. Centennial is home to the state’s one and only baseball team, the Vermont Lake Monsters. For many years the Lake Monsters were a single-A minor league affiliate for a rotating cast of Major League Baseball teams such as the Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox.
However, following some reorganization of the league in 2020, the Monsters lost their affiliation. They have since become a collegiate summer baseball team, playing other teams of similar happenstance throughout the region.
Hot Dog Hysteria nights have consistently been the most attended games of the summer, often selling out before gates even open. These marketing events speak to a new age of baseball, one where the general public has become less romantic about baseball’s methodical pacing, as well as a lack of interest from the local fans in a bunch of college players living out their summer of dreams before earning their econ degrees. There are no more Jason Bays, Paul O’Neils1, or Ken Griffey Jr’s2 playing up at Centennial Field anymore — only young men on their last stop before the cubicle.
Similar marketing gimmicks have been sweeping the country, infecting America’s pastime with a commercialist boost. The popularity of the sport is down. Ballpark attendance is decreasing, and teams from the majors to the minors to the exhibition leagues are hunting for ways to get people in the stands. But that economic drive is hardly new; teams have always attempted to lure ticket buyers with promotions, but the goods seem to be getting cheaper and more colorful. This is typified by the Savannah Bananas, who have made their entire on-field identity a promotion with acted-out innings, advertisements, and song and dance throughout the entire game.
I have only ever attended another ballpark promotion once. It was a Met game at Citi Field. The promotion was Jay Bruce bobblehead day, where the first 1,500 fans to enter received a figurine of the mighty Mets slugger featuring his classic swing3; the toy was cheap, and the bat he was holding broke instantly.
These types of banal promotional giveaways, centered on cheap and disposable Stuff, pale in comparison to the Hot Dog Hysteria. One cannot have their experience influenced by the bobblehead that breaks, the t-shirt covered with local advertisers, or any Chinese-made plastic afterthought doled out to you. This Stuff is so entirely disconnected from the actual game at hand. The enjoyment of this Stuff is only found in the brief moment of receiving the colorful object, which instantly fades out the frame as you experience the game.
With Hot Dog Hysteria, one is given a new medium through which to enjoy the festivities at hand. It’s not a mindless giveaway; it’s a culinary experience. It’s a food pairing that has been celebrated through the ages of the game. And it’s easy to see why: after only one bite an intoxicating sensation runs through you; the hot dog heightens your experience. The particular hot dogs served at Hysteria, boiled in dirty brown water and served upon cardboard troughs, are always hit with the necessary condiment complementaries of mustard, ketchup, relish, and (my personal favorite) white onion4. When used correctly, the additions provide transformational properties to the dog, coating it up just enough for you to eat a dollar's worth of product before your body knows what you’ve done to it.
But the experience is about more than just an opportunity for cheap food. It’s about the opportunity to find yourself among the masses. To be with your fellow man and woman. To shift your feet in sweaty lines waiting on beer and hot dogs. To see the high-school laborers working machine-like to fill up every tray they see. To watch as men with pinned-up hats keep scores inside a stat book that reminds you of the one that you used to own.
It’s about seeing the people around you: coworkers from years gone by, Mexican men with beautiful calves, bartenders you’ve never seen touched by the sun. You are able to hear sounds of the park that none of Burns’s research assistants could ever uncover in archived footage: people’s warnings to not look into the “brown water” that lovingly serves as the hot dogs’ boarding area; a man in front of you in the ticket line negotiating free entry since he drove the visiting team’s bus; college students cracking open their smuggled beers, trying to find the best way possible to hide their self-applied discount.
This is the baseball that I have come to love and enjoy; and any baseball purist sickened by pitch clocks and the spectacle of a giveaway might try to open their eyes to the modern spectacle of Hot Dog Hysteria. I get to camp out along the third-base line, parking myself upon a plastic picnic table and giving ample room for my platter of food and cup of beer. I get to sit amongst my friends and enjoy the ambiance provided by the away team's bullpen only a few feet away. The numbers on the illuminated scoreboard don’t define my night; nine-inning thrillers and blowouts by the fourth inning have no effect on if I’ve enjoyed my evening at Centennial Field.
Burns might be able to spin these nights into some indelible tale of competition where the home team overcame the lethargic crowd with their displays of athletic superiority — but that is his story, not mine.
The reverence that I will have for these summer nights will not be for the game, or even the hot dogs. It will be these moments, underneath the hot summer sun, that make me cherish the time I have and the people I am with. It makes me think about the great game of baseball still bringing people together. It makes me think about how lucky I am to have a bike that hasn’t been stolen5, so I can pedal my way there and back from the fields, enjoy the summer nights that much more, and even burn off some excess hot dog calories while I do so.
Carl Crawford is a freelance writer based out of his hometown of Burlington, Vermont. In his spare time he likes to get breakfast with his mom, play disc golf with his friends, and look for other jobs.
FOOTNOTES
1 Vermont Reds product; still played at Centennial field, though.
2 Vermont Mariners product; still played at Centennial field, though.
3 True to form, there was no ball making contact with the Bruce figurine’s bat.
4 The onion used for Hot Dog Hysteria comes from a bag of unknown source.
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