Hungry or not, Kyle Marshall will eat a hot dog at a baseball game.
After all, he said, hot dogs are part of the ballpark experience.
"Getting a hot dog is what you do," the agribusiness management junior said. "It's like when you go to the movies, you get popcorn."
It seems many Americans agree with Marshall. About 30 million hot dogs are sold cumulatively at major league ballparks each season (averaging about one million per ballpark), said Patrick Wilson, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council's manager of public affairs. And that doesn't include the playoff season. This year, New York's Shea Stadium is expected to consume the most hot dogs — 1.7 million, he said.
Although Lansing's Oldsmobile Park can't boast it has sold that much food compared with the major-league parks, more than 20,000 hot dogs were sold last year, more than 7,000 bags of peanuts and more than 50,000 draft beers, said Dave Parker, director of food service for the ballpark.
At MSU's Kobs Field, the popularity of the hot dog dates back to before MSU was even a university.
"I've got an old menu board from when it was Michigan State College, and there were only four or five things on there," said Alan Wilkinson, assistant manager of concessions at MSU. "The hot dog was one of them. It's probably the portability of it. You're not going to sit there eating a plate of spaghetti watching the game.
"I think street vendors in Chicago, New York, Boston — where these great baseball teams started — carried over into the stands."
Wilson said the hot dog legend is that some time during the early 1900s, during a cold baseball game in St. Louis, a man went looking for a warm snack. He happened upon a vendor selling hot dogs, bought them in bulk and brought them into the baseball stadium to sell.
Ever since, it has been the staple of the baseball scene.
"The smell attracts people, absolutely," Wilkinson said. "When you gas the grills and start cooking the hot dogs, that attracts people. Surprisingly, lines attract people. They don't mind waiting in line a little bit for something they perceive will be good."
Another hot dog tale, Wilson said, suggests the name hot dog was popularized by a newspaper cartoonist. Because he didn't know how to spell frankfurter, he labeled the food in his cartoon "hot dogs."
At major-league stadiums, however, healthy food is the least popular, said Nick Heitmeyer, food and beverage manager of the Delaware North Company, which provides concessions for Comerica Park in Detroit.
"The fruit cup that we sell was the least sold item," Heitmeyer said. "For the whole season, we sold less than 1,000 — including the playoffs."
When people are in a baseball environment, they want their standard ballpark food, he said. And psychology senior Scott Pantaleo agrees.
"(Ballparks) are just known for having the best," Pantaleo said. "It's part of the experience and I'm too lazy to make them at home. It's tradition."
