The crack of the bat. The slap of the ball in your beat-up catcher’s glove….
Maybe you were all in—or is that all out?—at the Homerun Derby at the local lottery tourney hosted last Sunday by Whistler Slo-Pitch at a nicely spruced-up Spruce Grove Park. (The official season kicked off May 27.)
It’s a legacy that goes back to the early ’80s when Whistler still called a beer league a beer league, and teams came up with names like the Rainbow Reefers; the Nads (you could yell Go, Nads! Go!); and The Dregs—our own Whistler Question team so-named since we figured it suited us on all levels imaginable, both on and off the field. It was a team name that lived on, even without any Questionables. (Read all about the old beer league in back issues of the Question, nicely preserved at Whistler Museum and Archives.)
Maybe your summer sweet spot is classic Nat Bailey Stadium with a golden sunset igniting the Vancouver Canadians to another hometown homerun. Or maybe you can’t resist Toronto lately, much like our fearless editor Braden Dupuis who’s catching the Jays up against the likes of the Padres and Tampa Bay Rays right on home turf.
Whether it’s little league, beer league or major league, welcome to summer—and the hottest game in town that serves up another summer classic.
The mighty hot dog has been the champion of the concession stand for a century or more, at baseball games and beyond. But they don’t get even a mention in this old chestnut which, believe it or not, was a waltz from 1908:
Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd,
Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks
I don’t care if we never get back…
Sure, we still don’t care if we never get back, and we still love those peanuts and Cracker Jack (made by German immigrants in Chicago who borrowed the nickname for the US Navy’s service dress uniforms). But I say hot dogs have largely taken their places in the concession stand line-up, so where did those dang dogs come from?
It’s hard to say, and maybe I’m too “dogged” (add winking emoji) about the whole thing. But either way it’s fun to explore. Like who knew that Pliny wrote about ancient sauerkraut, which is very good on hot dogs although none were around back then.
Another ancient Greek, a naturalist named Strabo, figured out that rabbits—which eventually became so popular they were carted all over the world for a quick, meaty meal such that they often became pests, like in Australia—came from the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain. (Mallorca is the largest one).
Apparently Louis XVIII was such a fan he could take one sniff of rabbit fricassee and tell you which part of France it came from. This was long before “less reputable” restaurants in Paris in the 1800s served fricassee of cat, pretending it was rabbit. Think of the possibilities! Vendors in the stands yelling, “Hot cats! Hot cats! Get your foot-long hot cats!”
We know that the first evidence of pigs being domesticated comes from Çayönü, in Turkey, some 10,000 years ago. And lord knows you need good pork to make a good hot dog. That is, unless you go for more contemporary versions, like all-beef dogs. Or good veggie ones from that very Vancouver Yves Cuisine, ironically born in 1985 in a plant above Save-On Meats in the downtown eastside, and once the only hot dog Paul McCartney would allow at his concerts.
You can learn who made the first bread (again, the ancient Greeks) or where the first commercial mustard came from (Dijon). Or all about hotchpotch (or hodgepodge)—mixed stew from the 16th century. There’s hot pot, from both eastern and western cultures and connected to hotchpotch. But, alas, no “hot dogs.” Maybe they’re not a serious enough topic.
However, we do know from numerous sources, including Wikipedia, that both “wiener” and “frankfurter” come from Germany, named for their places of origin: Wienerwurst, which literally means “Vienna sausage” and frankfurter, from Frankfurt, of course, where pork sausages were known since the 13th century.
But it’s the origin story about sticking a wienie in a bun that’s, well, still a good summer mystery.
From Martha Barnette and her eye-opener, Ladyfingers and Nun’s Tummies: A Lighthearted Look at How Foods Got Their Names, we know that in the early 1900s, a famous American cartoonist, T. A. “Tad” Dorgan, first drew one of the above sausages to resemble a dachshund in a bun, riffing on the dog as a jokey meme for all things German, and on the idea you might find who-knows-what kind of meat in a wiener.
In Germany, “dog” was used as slang for “sausage.” And, according to Wiki, dog meat was once pretty common in sausages and eaten straight in parts of Germany in the 1800s and 1900s. (Do an internet search today and you’ll see all kinds of prompts like, human DNA, or brain meat, in wieners.)
Still, it’s the first use of a hot dog with bun no one can pin down. Barnette and Wiki both agree it’s usually one of two Americans—Charles Feltman, who sold “red hots” on Coney Island, or Antoine Feuchtwanger, from Frankfurt, who usually get the credit. Wiki elaborates, offering several versions, as only collaborative histories can, that Feuchtwanger originally served his frankfurters with gloves for his customers so they wouldn’t burn their hands. Expensive when the gloves weren’t returned so, as one story goes, his wife suggested using a bun instead.
Think about that next time you’re enjoying your hot dog, all carefully wrapped in insulating foil and paper so the only glove you’ll need is for baseball.
Then get out there in this gorgeous summer weather, and play ball!
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist whose grandad was key in starting men’s softball leagues in the prairie towns of Alberta way back when. n
