The Thing About Stadium Food

Written by: Zach Hammer, The Reserve Clause

America is in the midst of a crippling recession with no real recovery in sight, unemployment rates are staggeringly high from coast to coast, and the stock market rises and falls with the ferocity of a diving pool at a fat kids camp, yet there’s one thing we Americans refuse to give up: Our goddamn stadium food.

My brother is a grocery store flier shopper. Every Sunday he pours through grocery store flyers to plan his meals for the week. I, on the other hand, believe saving cash is all well and good, but when it gets down to actually walking the grocery aisles, I’m about as disciplined as Dominique Strauss-Kahn (see, I read real news too). But as different as we may be, there is still that one beautiful thing that brings cheapskates and irresponsible idiots together: the $14 baseball helmet nachos.

As Americans, we may spend our weekdays clipping coupons and buying TP in bulk, but we are still more than happy to dole out stacks of cash for those delights that lie behind the heavy steel counters. Last fall, my brother and I made our way through the concourse at an NFL game to find a restroom when a smell so delicious hit me that I instantly forgot the reason we climbed all those stairs. I turned to my brother, who was equally entranced, and we made our way barreling down the concourse, through an old lady and likely a small child or two, until there they stood before us in all their glory: gigantic roasted turkey drumsticks. We had to have one.

After an excruciating wait, it was finally our turn to approach the heavy steel oasis and place our order. As the elder brother, I took the lead: “Two ridiculously large turkey legs, please.” The woman behind the counter turned to her left, tightened her back brace, bent at the knees, and with all her might lifted two massive pieces of poultry out of the roaster and onto a pair of woefully undersized plates. “That will be $44.”

I, a  shameless consumer of $8 hummus, was appalled. “$44? That’s insane. Does it come with anything else?”

“Nope,” she answered, “just the leg. You want ‘em or not?”

“Not for $44 I don’t.”

Without batting an eye, she moved to the next customer, who promptly ordered our turkey legs, then brushed us aside to grab a stack of napkins before walking away victorious. It was obvious right then and there that I had made a terrible mistake.

My brother stepped in. “Ma’am, we’ve changed our mind about the ridiculously large turkey legs. We didn’t know they came with unlimited napkins. We’ll take two.”

He handed over $50, told her to keep the change, and we had finally secured our prize.

At that moment, my brother didn’t care that he just forked over $50 of his hard-earned dollars, or that the same amount of money could buy him groceries for the week. He had gotten exactly what he wanted, and there on the concourse, there was no recession, no unemployment rates, no depressing 401K statements. We had our chemically-enhanced turkey legs, roasted in pure lard, and nothing else mattered.

And that’s the great thing about stadium food. There is no place on earth that you could get a chicken-fried elephant ear and not care that you just sacrificed your cheese and butter for the week. In a world of penny pinching and downsizing, we still hold stadium food sacred.

So while we may have missed the go-ahead score, nearly peed our pants in the 4th quarter since we never did get to that bathroom, and my brother ate ramen and ketchup for a week, on that fall afternoon, we were millionaires.