It’s spring in Texas, and a young man’s thoughts invariably turn to baseball, a sport so totally co-opted by sexual innuendo that you can’t describe even the smallest part of the action without sounding obscene.
On my bike ride home I often pass by the ballfield of Concordia University, a Lutheran Seminary in downtown Austin. Despite the eight years I’ve spent in this town, I have never met anyone who has gone to Concordia, nor have I met anyone who has met anyone who has gone to Condcordia. Nevertheless, last week I gave in to the temptation to watch a ballgame.
And where there’s baseball there’s hotdogs.
The kid who ran the concession stand didn’t open up until after the national anthem. There was no beer, but for $3.50 you could get two cokes and a hotdog. He had the hotdogs wrapped in tinfoil and stacked in a papersack on the counter. By the bottom of the first they were still slightly warm. Condiments came in giant plastic squeezebottles of mustard and ketchup.
The juicy beef meat felt slightly crisp against my teeth, and the bun had the warm and mooshy feel of the buns that your mother kept in supermarket bags on top of the refrigerator and took down only for picnics or for a summer lunch following swimming.
It was a richly plain and somehow nostalgic hotdog. It had a certain added charm, something situational that transcended the meager condiments and rustic preparation.
Concordia Ballpark Hotdog: Grade B