Ballpark Feasting

Note: The original version of this post was done as a guest post last week on Paul Daugherty’s Substack: The Morning Line. Paul was a sports columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer for 30 years and now shares his writing with his readers on his Substack. If you are a Cincinnati sports fan, go check out his work. He’ll help you cope! Apologies to his subscribers who have already read this piece.

This past June, my sister got four free Cincinnati Reds tickets through a vendor at her work. She invited me, my brother, and my mom. The seats were in a location called the “Champions Club”, which includes all-you-can-eat food and soft drinks.

It’s very nice!

It doesn’t get much better than getting a FREE ticket that also includes unlimited FREE food (well, I guess it could be better if ownership gave us a team that could win). Usually when I buy tickets to a Reds game, it’s high up in the cheap section and I’m closely following the baseball action.

However, when I went to this FREE all-you-can-eat game, suddenly I transformed into a competitive eater that was solely focused on eating as much food as my body would allow. The baseball action became background noise.

In my warped mind, by gorging myself, I was getting back at the Reds for all the times they price-gouged/screwed me on all of my previous “regular” stadium visits. My thought process was: the more I ate, the more money I was recouping from the Reds.

I was revenge-eating.

I imagined what the club employees must think of as they tirelessly prepare food, set it out, and have it quickly snatched away by the mob.

I did my best to watch the game, but everything on the field was secondary to acquiring and consuming food.

My brain was hijacked.

Even though I was in a partial food coma, I do remember that the Reds blew the lead and lost the game. I think Blake Dunn dropped a cheeseburger in left field, which allowed the go-ahead bun to score.

I could have pushed myself to scarf down more grub, but I decided I didn’t want to overdo it and feel miserable. These were my final eating statistics for the game (I was both proud and disgusted with myself).

It was a pleasant evening of devouring and hanging out with family. I left the Champions Club feeling like I earned a personal victory against the franchise that’s worth $1.6 billion.

Until next time,
Patrick

Until next time,
Patrick

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