Sitting behind the bullpen of a Blue Jays game this past week reminded me of an obvious fact that I had forgotten: Ball players are pigs.
Hardly a revelation, but the extent of a ballplayers' junk food snacking is beyond belief. There is no other sport where a player can indulge almost as deeply as a fan (minus the beer) during a game. Case in point: At a recent Jays game, rookie pitcher Brian Wolfe, from the dugout a pink Hello Kitty bag and within the first inning, a bored Brandon League dug into it for a bag of chips while half of the others were eating sunflower seeds and, later, beef jerky. In the bullpen, only the booze separates the players from the fans: The pros watch the game as leisurely as we do and stuff their faces like the rest of us.
Ballplayers are notorious for their poor eating habits though sportswriters, unfortunately, don't have the food-obsessed in mind to document the junky diets. But the question of what ballplayers eat has long interested me and it's why this feature about Mike Piazza and the 2002 New York Mets in the New York Times Magazine has stuck with me so long:
The clubhouse is designed to help the players relax and bond -- a cross between a frat house rumpus room and a Chuck E. Cheese's. But in the weeks I spent around the Mets, I witnessed little bonding amid the tubs of Bazooka bubble gum, packets of sunflower seeds, boxes of doughnuts, bags of chips, bottles of soda, beer, Gatorade, M&M's, Hershey bars, Power Bars, ice cream, pizza, pasta, ribs and macaroni and cheese.
Last month, I indulged my passion for baseball and junk food in one move, writing about Blue Jay relief pitcher Brian Tallet and his culinary adventures in making his own beef jerky. Check it out here. Included is a recipe to turn 21 lbs of inside round into beef jerky. How long does it last? "About two weeks." Pigs, I tell you.
