Time For a Red-Hot--and a Little Context

Third in a series of articles offering a glimpse behind the scenes at Dodger Stadium.

Dodger fans arrive notoriously late to the game. It's usually well past the first pitch, if not into the second inning, that they line up for food.

For years I avoided ballpark cuisine. My daughter and I would arrive just as the gates opened and find a comfy spot in the island of empty seats. We'd peacefully munch gourmet sandwiches brought from home while sharing the sights and sounds of batting practice.

Visiting the stadium alone as a reporter, I somehow find the smell of hot dogs irresistible. As the fans stream in from the parking lot, I take leave from another anemic Dodger performance (the team would lose six of seven on the week) and go in search of my favorite baseball treat.

The red hot. A spicy grilled hot dog nestled in an incomparably limp but tasty ballpark bun.

What I found was that the name had changed to a "Tex-Mex picante dog." And no one seemed to have it.

"We just don't sell much of them," says one helpful kiosk manager. She has me wait while she calls a supervisor. A vendor on the fifth level is located.

I ride up two escalators, take a sharp left, ignore the plethora of name-brand junk food and make my way to the deep blue-lit home of the Dodger dogs.

"You the guy who called?" asks the man behind the counter. He says he's been selling dogs, beer, sodas and ice cream for more than two decades. "We're about the only ones who sell red hots anymore."

I buy a couple (actually, four) and we reminisce about the uproar created by a former concessionaire who tried to replace grilled hot dogs with the steamed variety.

"Dodger dogs have always been grilled," he says with finality. "No one wants them to look like shriveled prunes." The concessionaire's replacement reverted to grilled.

I ask more about the Dodger dog business. How many are sold during a game? Where are they stored and cooked? Is it true that the best Dodger dogs are secretly grilled in beer by old-timers who know all the tricks?

He notices my press pass. "Say," he says, "you aren't going to write about this, are you?" He seems genuinely frightened. "I'm not supposed to talk to you!" A group of co-workers comes up and hastily pulls him into the back.

Turns out, a cashier tells me, that food service employees are not allowed to speak to the press. "You have to see Arturo," she says. She points upstairs.

I go up to the eighth floor and find the windowless cubbyhole where the food service elite resides. A huge man stops me at the door. "I'd like to talk to Arturo," I explain (that's not his real name). "I want to do a piece on Dodger dogs."

Arturo, who is sitting nearby, is suddenly too busy to see me. I can call him later, he says. I do, and he's tied up. I call again and this time it's an inventory crisis. We make an appointment, but he misses it.

It's clear this is one conversation that isn't going to happen.

All this takes place well after the Dodgers' game against the Arizona Diamondbacks ends with a rare victory (the Diamondbacks walk in the winning run in the ninth). For now, I wind my way down the stadium's stairways and find an empty seat to finish off my last two red hots.

I'm troubled, though, by the tension that talking about hot dogs seems to produce. On the field, I can see several players who have publicly attacked team management or recklessly charged all of baseball with racism and the like. Many have grotesquely postured for millions of dollars more than a sizable chunk of this evening's crowd will ever earn in their lifetimes.

They suffer no consequences. A counter clerk with years of stories to tell about something as integral to baseball as a Dodger dog, however, recoils in terror from the very thought that he might say something that his employer won't like. Even the Dodger dog's top dog ducks and covers from the sight of a reporter.

It's a reminder, I guess, that for some, a ballgame is just a job, and one that comes with some apparently onerous corporate rules at that.

The inning ends, and I pack up the remains of my meal. Somehow, the red hots just don't taste as good today.