You guessed it: in a continuation of recent blogging trends, today’s post will cover in-season topics that I didn’t get around to covering during the season itself. And today’s topic is one near and dear to many of your hearts, even though your heart would be much better off without it.
I am talking, of course, about colossally oversized food items. In a move ripped straight out of the Lake County Captains playbook, this July the Pensacola Blue Wahoos debuted a monstrous menagerie of deep-battered seafood that they called “The Battleship.”
Sez the team:
Tasked with creating something out of the box and unprecedented in Minor League Baseball, Blue Wahoos Executive Chef Chris Voorhees and Sous Chef Travis Wilson came up with the Battleship. It is a culinary creation that will tickle the fancy of any seafood loving sports fan.
“It’s like a po’boy all grown up,” said Voorhees.
So why not call it the Po’ Man? We’ll leave that question for another day, so that I may once again have a press release do my job for me:
[The Battleship] features jumbo fresh caught gulf shrimp, fried fresh oysters, two whole fried soft shell blue crabs and lightly fried potato salad “baseballs” with lettuce, sliced tomatoes and lemon tartar sauce all on a foot-long French bread roll garnished with a pair of grape tomato “pegs”.
The sandwich is large enough to feed a small family, but if fans can finish the entire thing on their own in under 11:21 minutes they get their name and picture on the Blue Wahoos Battleship Wall of Fame and an “I sank the Battleship” t-shirt. If they can ‘Sink the Battleship’ in under nine minutes, they get the wall recognition, t-shirt and the sandwich is free. So far the fastest finisher did so in 11:21 minutes, thus setting the benchmark for recognition.
Clearly, this is one game of Battleship that will always end with the call of “I-8.” (Even if what’s being “sunk” more closely resembles a sub.)
And — update! — check out this informative and compulsively readable post on the Battleship, courtesy of the Blue Wahoos’ “Hook, Line, and Sinker” blog.
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As most of you know, my days of consuming Brobdingnagian concession stand entities has gone the way of the dodo, thanks to a 2012 celiac disease diagnosis (file under “What can you do?”). For those who may be interested, this summer Alysa Bajenaru interviewed me about my life as a “ballpark celiac” for her “Inspired RD” blog. Alysa also has celiac disease, and as the wife of professional pitcher-turned-coach Jeff Bajenaru she’s spent an inordinate amount of time at the ballpark as well.
Read the interview HERE, because I’ve got nothing else to offer today. Thus concludes Ben’s Biz Blog post #995.
benjamin.hill@mlb.com
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