Ballpark lunch, day 3

Ballpark dinner, day 3
Originally uploaded by Butch Wynegar.

Great and manifold were PNC's food offerings -- they included a seafood stand with the haimishe name of Benkovitz's, and the frighteningly named "Quaker Steak and Lube" [home of the Porterhouse a la Crude Oil?] -- but given that it was an afternoon game in heat so intense I was recreating the conditions of primordial life inside my jeans, and given that my ballpark diet is giving me an Elvis-dyin'-on-the-throne sort of look, I opted for the simple fare you see before you. Which prompts a question: how is it possible that hot pretzels bought on the street in New York can be so good, and ballpark pretzels, the simplest of all foods, can be so mediocre (especially in a fancy new stadium like this)? How can stadiums get away with this? I suppose it's because salt-licking jackasses like me will buy them, but still, once I had polished off this pretzel, licked the salt from the wax paper, and seriously considered buying another one, I was disappointed. --JF