Now, it wasn't entirely the fault of the game -- I had an eventful day leading up to it. Wednesday night I fed Theo solid food for the first time (well, comparatively solid -- rice cereal -- and when I say "fed", he ate about half of it, with the rest ending up all over me), and then at midnight I went to see the very last Star Wars film and shared a cab home with two Stormtroopers at 3:30 am. And Thursday was my 30th birthday.
Big stuff.
So when the game turned out to be on the radio only and then a pitching duel, at least for the first half, I just couldn't get into it. I enjoy a well-pitched game, but it takes a magnificent broadcaster to make that kind of game sing on the radio. Luckily, we in Toronto have a magnificent broadcaster in Jerry Howarth, but I still couldn't get fired up about the game. I don't blame Jerry, though.
That was pretty exciting, though, right?
Nope. Couldn't get into it. Could you? Please, sell me this game. Tell me what was great and exciting about it. Make me feel foolish for not being enraptured with every last moment of it.
In the meantime I'm going to talk about hot dogs.
I don't know if it was one of the promises when Ted Rogers bought the SkyDome, though we all seemed to expect it: those below replacement level concessions had to be fixed. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm happy with the upgrades we've been given. Excellent stuff. The fact that the concessions haven't changed at all from last year doesn't negate the magnificent job that Rogers and company have done on the turf, on the scoreboards (especially the outfield walls, which I adore), on the general look of the place, on the sound system (and on decisions made on when and what to play in terms of music and sound effects). That stuff is all great, and I'm happy with all of it.
But what the hell is with these awful hot dogs? Sure, you can go down to the 100 level and have a kosher dog that's good, and they have sushi down there that's way better than it should be for stadium food. But those are two stand-alone concessions, and you have to go all the way downstairs for them. The rest of the food at the Rogers Centre is generic, boring, and bland.
So here's my insane idea: replace the in-house Sky Snacks (or whatever they've been renamed -- Rogers Snacks?) with street vendors. Four or five of 'em on each level would do the trick. You could open the doors and let 'em roll their carts up the ramps half an hour before game time, and let 'em roll back out in the seventh or eighth inning so that they could re-park themselves on the street to handle the post-game crush.
There are probably 80,000,000 things wrong with my idea. And I don't expect it to be implemented. But can't the Rogers Centre take some cues from the street vendors around them? Maybe put in grills instead of those heated spinny-racks that the hot dogs circulate on now? Change to a fry that's more like a potato and less like a processed piece of styrofoam? Figure out a way to keep the hot dog buns from turning into sorry, sodden, soggy mush?
Fast food is often bad, but it doesn't have to be this bad. The difference was highlighted for me when I had an "O-Dog Combo" on a Saturday and then brought in a hot dog and fries from Don Juan's truck to Sunday's game. Sure, the Sky Snacks people were much nicer than Don Juan ("Just mustard and pickles? No, the bastard is getting the works on his hot dog," and sure enough, I got the works on my hot dog), but I'll take the surliness because the food is that much better.
Rogers: you have it in your power to do something about this. Yes, I totally understand that it's the lowest priority. I'm happy with the payroll bump and the stadium upgrades, and I'd scream bloody murder if either of those had been pushed back to accommodate the fast-tracking of new, yummier stadium food. Just please, don't bring back McDonalds.
And yes, this just goes to show that when things are going better than expected a Toronto fan will still manage to find something to complain about.
