Hot Dog Wasted

I haven’t quite figured New Orleans out. The housing market is ridiculously high, including our rent. And don’t dare try to go out to eat without a chunk of change in your pocket. Just to go to around the corner to Mahony’s and get a regular poboy, fries, and an Abita will set you back $15.00 – 20.00. But the city if full of free and cheap entertainment. I’ve seen Galactic, Trombone Shorty, and Rebirth at Wednesday at the Square. For free. I’ve eaten free red beans and rice with Kermit Ruffins at Vaughn’s. I’ve watched a seemingly endless amount of free prescreening of new movies this year, including a surprise spotting of Chip in Hot Tub Time Machine. I’ve poured countless free NOLA beers, and stumbled my way through free Abita pub crawls, not to mention the debauchery disguised as a free tour of the Abita brewery. I’ve been to numerous free festivals, including the world’s largest free festival. From second lines and “concerts”, to just walking around with a Budweiser tall boy from Sidney’s in hand and people (bum) watching , I’ve spent an entire day in the French Quarter and never had to pay for entertainment. Hell, even Mardi Gras is completely free. If you take into account the $2,300 worth of throws you take home, I guess you technically get paid to take part in the greatest 2 weeks on earth. Free Hornets games. Free crawfish on Frenchmen. Summer dinner specials. 75 cent Miller High Life and PBR. $1 baseball games. $1 dollar hot dogs.

It was the usual baseball weather (hotter-n-hell) when we arrived at Zephyr Field with our $1 tickets in hand a few wadded up dollar bills in our pocket. Even at a AAA game, I thought the $1 ticket would put us somewhere in the nosebleeds. We followed the section, row, and seat numbers like Google Maps and looked up to find that we were 3 rows away from being in the umpire’s back pocket.
Now that we had found our seats, I had one thing on my mind- $1 hot dogs. Tonight I was getting hot dog wasted (kind of like these guys).
Nothing says baseball like a hot dog.

Or making Coach Broome have to hold his head out the window on the 4 hour rides on the yellow dog in high school. Or getting in a game of flip or pepper during pregame. Or coming up with ridiculous rain delay entertainment.

Or Culkin baseball field. Me and my two brothers spent 2/3 of our childhood there. Seriously. If we weren’t playing, we were still there 6 days a week perving the dish like Squints, playing the biggest game of wall ball in Mississippi history, eating those unbelievable ballfield cheeseburgers, running the bases like we just strapped on a new pair of PF Flyers and were going to try and pickle The Beast, chasing down foul balls for a free coke, and treating Big League Chew like Big Chief.

Or the Mississippi Braves. How can a kid that grew up watching David Justice, Ryan Klesko, Chipper Jones, Tom Glavine, and Mark Lemke on TBS not like the Braves? The smaller stadium atmosphere, and the fact that they play in our own back yard make the Mississippi Braves special. Before the wife and I got married, we spent many a muggy night in dirty Pearl catching games, and sneaking in overflowing flasks of Jager. We got to see guys like Brian McCann, Martin Pardo, and Yunel Escobar, but missed a coach’s performance that should have won him an Oscar.

But back to those $1 hot dogs. I entered the night thinking my hot dog tolerance was pretty high, kind of like when I tried to take on The Gauntlet at Up Your Alley. I resisted Erin’s usual temptation of cotton candy, but I collapsed under the pressure of nachos. I made it through the jalapeno smothered, canned cheese coverd chips and 3 hot dogs before I realized that I was a hot dog lightweight. My HAC was twice the legal limit but I still went in for last call- a double shot of the Pecan Pie Blizzard from Dairy Queen.