Mark's First Baseball Bet

This isn’t about my first baseball game, but it was my first significant bet that I made that quasi-involved baseball. I don’t remember the exact time frame, but I think I was in the 5th or 6th grade, so I was maybe 10-11 years old.

I was at the ‘Stick with a buddy of mine (who actually ended up being a fairly well-known author) for a Sunday doubleheader (back in the days when they actually scheduled these things). We were always pretty competitive at everything we did, so the idea hit us. . . .let’s make a bet on who could eat the most hot dogs during the course of the day. Pretty reasonable bet for 2 dumbass kids. Ground rules were that each person had to get a hot dog at the beginning of each inning and had to finish it before the start of the next inning. The one who could not finish by the end of the inning was the loser and had to reimburse the other person for the cost of his hot dogs.

Now keep in mind that we were talking about Candlestick hot dogs here. If you don’t remember them, these are the ones that the walking vendors had sitting in the heated toxic goo in those metal cases that they carried around. When you ordered one, they’d pick up their tongs, open up the top and you’d get a whiff of that heated liquid that had quite an indescribable smell, and fish one out and plop in on a steam-soaked watery bun, slap a little Gulden’s, and you were off to the races. I’m not totally sure that these actually qualified as food, however they may have been in the same group as that Drumstick that we’ve been cultivating in Seth’s freezer.

Well, I am somewhat proud to say that I took this guy down in the 6th inning of the second game as I wolfed down my 14th dog of the day and my opposition was not able to answer the bell. The payoff was $2.00 times 14 dogs = $28 which was quite a handsome sum for a 10-11 year old at that time. More importantly, though, I learned from this experience was that it really wasn’t about the amount of money that you win, but rather the joy in being able to lord your victory over the other guy that made betting so cool.