A lot has changed from last year to this year. From a general American standpoint, the crisis created by COVID-19 has eased. It hasn’t been eliminated, maybe. But things are loosening up.
High schools held outdoor graduations. We had state championships decided on the field again. If the weather hadn’t been so wretched this weekend, we’d have had our usual barrage of fireworks set off at Gallagher Park in Lynn (we may still; it’s early in the day as this is written).
In short, America, you are free to party around the country.
So let’s do that. Let’s have a little lightness of heart. As this last year has shown us, in so many ways, nothing makes life more worth living than a little light-hearted fun. As a friend said to me the other day, “we all have an expiration date. We just don’t know when it is.”
So it was in this frame of mind that I sat down Sunday at noon to watch the Joey Chestnut Show — a/k/a “Nathan’s Fourth of July Hot Dog-Eating Contest,” held this year at Maimonides Park at Coney Island, home of the Brooklyn Cyclones Minor League baseball team.
The change of venue from the usual corner of Surf and Stillwell avenues was to ensure better social distancing (we’re not totally free of the pandemic, after all). But outside of that, the extravaganza of excess had its usual charm. And rather than sit there looking to criticize and poke holes in it, I just sat back and enjoyed the show. It’s been a tough year for everybody and we could use a little silliness.
And if it’s silliness you want, tuning into Nathan’s on July 4 and watching Joey and friends two-fist hotdogs dipped in a beverage (they go down easier that way) is about as silly as it gets.
That’s OK. I’m up for it. From emcee George Shea, who resembles nothing if not the most grotesquely sleazy carnival barker anyone could ever have imagined, to the hyperbole brought forth at every turn (at one point, ESPN put up a slide of the size of New York’s tallest buildings, with the information that if you stacked up all the hot dogs Mr. Chestnut has eaten in his career, it would fall somewhere between the Statue of Liberty and the Chrysler Building.
That’s a lot of frankfurters.
The ESPN telecast — which was an abject failure due to continued technical glitches (I bet they wouldn’t have had those glitches had LeBron James been eating hot dogs) — began with a lemonade chug-a-lug involving some behemoth mass of humanity named “Badlands Booker,” who downed three quarters of a gallon of the stuff and then belched into the microphone. Pretty gross, if belching is not your thing. Pretty impressive if it is.
Soon enough, it was time for the main course, so to speak. And as Joey stood there, gyrating as he put away hot dog after hot dog en route stuffing himself with 76 in 10 minutes (a record), all I could think was that if there’s anyone in history who would have loved to have challenged Chestnut in his annual endeavors, it would have been George Herman Ruth. The Babe. The Sultan of Swat. The Colossus of Clout. The Gourmand of Gluttony himself. That would have been Must-See TV.
If you’re into baseball folklore at all, you know that, supposedly, The Babe consumed copious numbers of hot dogs on a train ride, and ended up being so sick from it he was hospitalized and missed a few games. Some wags even called it “The Big Bellyache.”
He’d have been disqualified from Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, as the rules clearly stipulate that “there is no return on investments.” Read between the lines if you’re able to look up from returning your investments.
And guess what? We had skin in the game. Massachusetts’ own Geoffrey Esper of Oxford. He came in second Sunday, but in truth, Joey was Secretariat and Esper was back with the rest of the pack. Still, finishing second to the GOAT of Gluttony is no disgrace now, is it?