It’s no secret that baseball is no longer America’s pastime — football has surpassed baseball as the most popular sport in the country. This season, the Arizona Diamondbacks are making a push to encourage more people to attend their games by upgrading their ballpark food offerings.
The hometown Diamondbacks have struggled lately and this upcoming season is shaping up to be a bad one for the team, yet I am looking forward to going to a game more this season than I have in years past.
Some fans will argue that the glory of attending a baseball game is the tradition, and messing with the traditional ballpark hot dogs and light beer is a travesty.
Unfortunately for the purists, baseball is now in a race to keep up, and ever since the Texas Rangers launched their first extreme take on ballpark food, other stadiums around the country have started to debut their own special offerings. The Washington Nationals, for instance, offered an 8-pound cheeseburger that they have since taken off the menu.
For the Diamondbacks, extreme food started last year with the introduction of the $25 “D-Bat Dog,” an 18-inch monstrosity of a corn dog with cheese and bacon. Following the apparent success of the D-Bat Dog, the team announced a new series of menu additions for the 2015 season.
It started a month ago with the announcement of the Churro Dog and was followed more recently by news that local favorites such as Lo-Lo’s Chicken and Waffles, America’s Taco Shop and Zoyo Neighborhood Yogurt will be available at this season’s home games. Potentially most exciting are the additions of The Draft Room, which will reportedly feature more than 20 draft beers, and Food Truck Alley, which will allow additional food options on a rotating basis for each series.
There will obviously be additional stadium markups on the prices of all of these food items, but I think it’s a price people will be willing to pay for a more exciting variety of food at games. Given their relatively poor performance on the field over the past few years, tickets to D-backs games can be found at fairly reasonable prices, so it seems only fair to give the team some money at the concession stands.
As the country’s obesity epidemic continues to grow, these extreme food creations serve as an example of why 35 percent of Americans were considered obese as of 2011. For the fan who goes to the occasional game and wants a more entertaining dining experience, the new options are great, but teams across the league could be well served by trying to find some options that would appeal to more health-conscious fans.
It has yet to be seen what type of food the food trucks will offer, but there’s clearly room on the menu for some healthier options. For fans who want the “ultimate experience” and want to consume more calories in a day than they should in a month, the new offerings are great, but anyone going to more than two or three games a year would probably suffer from eating that much junk food.
The new food options are a reflection of what the fans love and the Diamondbacks should be applauded for attempting to make their offerings more exciting, but as much as I look forward to enjoying some of the new additions, the team should take it one step further and add some healthier items to the menu.
Reach the columnist at zjosephs@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @zachjosephson.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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