How Hawking Hot Dogs in the Major League Baseball Changed My Life

This is Our American Stories, and our next story is brought to us by a listener, Jim Johnson, who was a long-time pastor who lives in Rogers, Minnesota. Pastor Jim wowed our listeners back in December with his story, “Everett’s Last Christmas Carol.” We asked if he had another story to share with our listeners, and here he is.

Again, years, Pastor Jim, somewhere around Row Twenty-Two, Section Three, in the left-field bleachers in Bloomington, Minnesota, at the now-leveled Metropolitan Stadium—the Old Met, as we called it—where the Twins used to play between 1961 and 1981. There was that I learned a harsh, cruel lesson about life. I learned a lot of lessons about life, but that day culminated them all together. It’s been forty-one years since then, August of 1979. Back then, I was involved in professional, organized baseball. I even made it to the major leagues. It was big money for me, surrounded by fans, people trying to get my attention. The Twins’ owner signed my checks, and it was more cash than I could fathom. But it was, however, not as a left fielder that I made my name for the Minnesota Twins. I did play baseball, but not for the Twins. I was only a high school player for the Kennedy Eagles. Now, my place in the majors was as a seller of hot dogs at the game. I started with soda and popcorn, then worked my way up to frosty malts and snow cones. But my highest levels were reached as a hot dog vendor. That big time for me: selling Schweigert TenderBite hot dogs. Those sumptuous tubes I sold for a dollar, served up by a kid who would one day become Sports Illustrated writer, Steve Russian. He was then just a fourteen-year-old kid who forked boiled wieners and put them on buns for me, stuffed them in a wax-paper package, and once in a while, the gifted SI journalist-to-be would fling one hot dog to me, seeing how hungry and sweaty I was. Every time I scrambled down the steps to Russian’s post in the commissary in center field, behind the fence next to the scoreboard, Steve Russian would fling a hot dog to keep me going. I will never forget him for that gift. Baseball is good because of people like Steve Russian, and because it’s slow and dramatic and there’s time to learn how to live life well. Baseball has played in a crowd in an artificially made park, with people sitting on top of each other, crowding into you, elbows and kneecaps a little too tight. You see, baseball in the stadium with twenty thousand or thirty thousand or forty-five thousand people puts you in a different world. The smells, the sounds, the echoing crack of a Louisville Slugger, the force of a Bob Casey announcer saying, “Now batting for the Twins, number Twenty-Nine, the second baseman, Rod Carew”—or how he used to say in that buzz-saw voice, “No smoking in the Metrodome! No smoking!” And there you would see Ken Herbeck at first base, while Casey crooned that anti-nicotine song. There was Mike Kennedy, high school mate, our Varsity Eagle first baseman-pitcher, pretending to smoke while Mister Casey yelled, “No smoking!” And Herbeck would wave his arms saying, “No, no, you can’t do that!” And we loved it. That’s what happens when you put twenty-somethings in a stadium, tucked inside a place with twenty-five hundred fans or twenty-five thousand fans, and the noises and hot dogs and vendors—the players—all blending together with the PA man, a symphony of sports and people in life. Something better happens when you give a seventeen-year-old a cooler of hot dogs and you point to the crowd and say, “Go sell these!” You learn about the world selling hot dogs at a ball game. So now, when I’m living with the rest of you during this global pandemic, I pine for the crowds in those days at the Old Met. I think about August 1st, 1979, when I learned about crowds and humility and revenge and hot dogs. The Old Met was a hodgepodge patchwork of a sports venue, almost modular. The infield was made of black soil, like it was from the Red River Valley of the North. It was a small stadium that could hold up to forty-five thousand people, even more for the Vikings games, but it was, well, a little backward. But we loved it because it was ours. It was not New York, it was not L.A., it was not Chicago, it was not Riggy, it was not Saint Louis. Just Old Met Stadium built in Bloomington, Minnesota, on an onion field next to the Minnesota River. Now it’s the Mall of America, but then it was just a training ground for life. That day, I muttered, “Hot dogs!” I was mad. “Hot dogs!” It was a hot day, so I would sell about thirty-six, maybe seventy-two hot dogs. That was it, while my friends during that hot knothole afternoon game would be making twenty percent commission on snow cones or malt cups by the hundred. I asked our commissary manager, Mister Dillon, the cigar-smoking vendor boss, if maybe, just maybe—just for a Wednesday day game with eighty-three-degree heat, for a Twins game against the Oakland A’s—if I could sell seventy-five-cent malt cups or snow cones instead of hot, hot hot dogs. Dillon, to my incredulity, said, “No, sell hot dogs!” “What?” I said. “Come on, I’m a hot dog vendor, I’m an upper-class sales rep. It was not quite beer vendor level, but way above the soda hawkers and the lad selling popcorn. Hot dog vendors had status. We could cry out with our throats wide open, the veteran first-team Major League Schweigert vendors: ‘Hot dogs, get your hot dogs here!’” It was the rookies who had no choices: peanuts. Yes, they had clout, but hot dog vendors are supposed to get their way. So I asked Dillon if I could sell snow cones, but he said, “No. We’re not going to do that on a knothole Wednesday at 3 p.m. with only five thousand seven hundred eleven fans in the park that day, selling for a team that would draw the fewest fans of any team in the American League that year: an average of nine thousand nine hundred fans per game. Those poorly-middling Twins were letting go of all their stars because Mister Griffith was too tight to pay them, and the fans stayed away in droves. We, in turn, were destined to watch players like Rick Sofield and Willie Norwood instead of Larry Heisel and Greg Nettles and Lyman Bostock and Rod Carew.” The crowds were so thin, so we figured if we showed up on a sweltering eighty-three day to sell hot dogs, we could at least sell something cold. But Dillon said, “No chance!” And that ticked me off. So my co workinglings venders one through two hundred ninety-nine were selling cold items and making big fat coin, and I would be selling steaming hot dogs to little children who did not want to eat something hot, and maybe make fourteen dollars for the day. That was wrong. “Hot dogs!” I growled. To top it off, Section Three was filled with little children—tiny humans with small coins and no desire to eat hot Schweigert TenderBites. They crowded the aisles in such a way that I couldn’t get to my spot at the Old Met. The high school vendors all staked their claim: this guy in the third base seats, that guy in the second deck behind home. But I and my gentle giant friend Gunner—that six-foot-four first base backup to Kent Herbeck at Kennedy High School. Gunner and I would claim the first deck of left field. We owned it. It was ours. It was our unquestioned capitalistic domain. But those knothole kids got in for free with an adult who paid three dollars for a ticket, and any old guy who paid that little for a ticket was not going to spend a dollar for the Junior Knothole kids. He crowded into his Ford Galaxy for a free knothole game on an eighty-three-degree day in Minnesota. So that was my mindset going into Row Thirty-Two that August First day. During the middle of the first inning, then and there, I decided I was going to have my way. I decided to break vendors’ code rules. Yes, I was mad, so I could do it. Rule number one for vendors was always: never walk on the bleacher seat backs. And you’re listening to Jim Johnson. When we return, Jim Johnson’s story continues here on Our American Stories.

And we’re back with Our American Stories, and with Jim Johnson. Let’s pick up where he last left off. During the middle of the first inning, then and there, I decided I was going to have my way. I decided to break vendors’ code rules. Yes, I was mad, so I could do it. Rule number one for vendors was always: never walk on the bleacher seat backs. Unthinkable! You have to walk down the aisle. But “No!” I said, like Herbie Brooks, the passionate Minnesota-born, Saint Paul’s-side coach of the Gophers in Team USA Hockey: “Not today! Not tonight!” I was sick and tired of kids and crowds, and sick and tired of hearing how people had to follow the rules. So I was cruising down those bleacher-back steps, Row Twenty-Two, Row Twenty-One, and I was carrying my thirty-six hot dogs in a candy-apple plastic tub, my Vendor number 311 button flapping on my hat, my crisp linen vendor shirt, my coin apron clanking and clinking down the aisle with me. And I was feeling good. I was feeling right all the way down Row Twenty-Five, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Three. I was going great, my athletic poise carrying the day—not a worry. But then came Row Twenty-Two, and there my ankle turned on the top of that bleacher. My Nike high-top twisted, and my left knee wrenched itself between seats fourteen and fifteen. My chest heaved into Row Twenty-One, and my hot dog cooler popped and bounced onto rows nineteen and twenty. My wax-paper baggies spilled out Schweigert TenderBites, and they slinkied and wobbled between seats twelve and thirteen and fifteen. Coins from my apron sprinkled and chinkled and rolled, and little knothole children. Those thieves pounced on my quarters—four dollars’ worth of them—and liberated them from my care. One wiener splunged underneath my foot, and a teenage kid—some gearhead with orange hair—pointed and stared and said, “Ah, look at that! Look at that kid!” His friends laughed hard, and they pointed at me with their fingers, at my vulnerable position, and laughed like mockers and scoffers. Some hot dogs escaped while I picked up my coins, my red face with anger, looking back at them, and watching those preadolescent pirates scooping up my change, and it was all gone. It was there I realized, “Yes, you have to pay for your misdeeds.” Some people get away for their disorder, but not me. It was there that I realized there is no true justice in this world—in this dark, dark planet. And like what I learned in elementary school in Bloomington, Minnesota, in the lower-class suburbs, or in Sunday school at the Lutheran Church. I learned that we are not all family. We are not all brothers and sisters, are we? We are not like Neil Diamond’s saying, “Hands touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you.” That’s not true, is it, Sweet Caroline? No, my friends, we are cheaters and thieves and out to get the goods. And no, we are not going to all wear masks and stay home and ride the coronavirus out. We are going to take what is ours and point and laugh at the man with the hot dogs stumbling over Row Twenty-Two and Twenty-One at the Met Stadium. You know, such cold, hard truths you can only learn personally. And I learned them at the Old Met Stadium. Now I’m a Lutheran pastor, the father of nine children, the grandfather of seven. I’ve pastored souls in northern Minnesota and I have cared for parishioners in southern California too. Now I’m a coach and adviser to twenty pastors of new churches all across America. And I’m a friend and father to seven adult children and two teenagers. And what I really want to tell them is summarized in five words: “Guard your hot dogs!” But a Scandinavian-American Anglo guy can have heroes. And they were people of all races and all creeds, every class. We respected Muhammad Ali from Kentucky, but he really was from the whole world. We wished we were Tony Olivia, the Cuban, and Ken Landrew, the Angelino from L.A. We adored Kirby Pucket, and we loved Ozzie Smith from Watts, and Rod Carew was from New York. But they were all ours. They were this sort of Twins. They were baseball players, and they belonged to us. We imitated them; we swung like them. And that’s good, because it’s baseball in a crowd in an artificially made city park with people sitting on top of each other during the COVID season. You think about times like that, and you wish we could learn to get along better. We could learn to get along and follow the rules and put on a mask or watch from home, and don’t sing in front of a big crowd of people, and spread your germs. For Pete’s sake, don’t smoke—not in the Metrodome or anywhere else! But now I’m living with the rest of you during this global pandemic, and I pine for those simpler days in the crowds and everything I learned from what I’m missing today. I remember one day selling hot dogs on the other side of the stadium when the Yankees were playing the Twins in a night game at the Old Met. I wandered away from left field and was selling on the second deck, side infield by first base. Everybody stopped selling, and the fans stood up when the Yankee slugger, Reggie Jackson, stepped into the box. When the Yankees came to the Met, it was always a sellout, or nearly so. The usually empty seats would fill with over forty thousand fans. They came to see mostly Reggie Jackson or to jeer him. Doug Corbett was the reliever. Twenty thousand voices yelled, hoping Doug Corbett would strike Reggie Jackson out. Jackson was controversial and lovable and hateable all at once because he enjoyed himself and loved to hit that little round ball as far and hard as he could. Like Muhammad Ali, he was “the straw that stirred the drink,” or like I would tell my little grandchildren, “the popsicle stick that stirs the hot chocolate.” Once Jackson said, “I don’t come to New York to become a star. I brought my star with me.” We love him for saying that, and we knew it was true. He also famously said, “After Jackie Robinson”—referring to the first Black player to break into the major leagues—”after Jackie Robinson, the most important Black player in baseball this Reggie Jackson.” And he added, “I really mean that.” But my favorite quote of all time from Mister October is how he described dealing with defeat. “I was reminded,” Jackson said, “when I lose a strikeout, a billion people in China don’t care.” I think that’s about the way it is. That day at the Old Met, I put down my hot dog cooler and just watched Jackson, with two men on base and the Yankees down by two, facing Corbett and the forty thousand Minnesotans in the eighth inning. He turned and twisted on the first pitch, missing wildly, and we all laughed as the umpire called, “Strike one!” He swung with as much gusto as that red-headed bozo who laughed at me when I tripped on Row Twenty-Two. Yes, we yelled, “Strike him out! Get him!” The second pitch was a curveball, and Jackson flailed again, spinning on his heels, falling on his right hip, sprawling into the dirt. Oh, how we jeered! Victory was so sweet. We thought two strikes on Reggie Jackson, and then came three wasted pitches, and Jackson watched them all and waited for the three-two pitch. And you’re listening to Jim Johnson and him Minneapolis. He’s also a pastor, as he mentioned. And by the way, to hear his story—and he lasted with us—”Everett’s Last Christmas Carol,” go to OurAmericanStories.com and in the search bar, just put in his name. Oh my goodness, I love that term “preadolescent pirates” because you could see those kids just stirring around, stealing every last order nickel and dime. “Yes, you do pay for your misdeeds,” he learned. When we come back, more of the terrific storyteller. And my goodness, we have so many across our country, so many of you, the listeners, are actually our very best storytellers, right up there with the best authors and the most famous storytellers in this great country. Jim Johnson’s story continues here on Our American Stories.

And we continue with Our American Stories and Jim Johnson’s story. Let’s pick up where we last left off. When it came, Jackson spun, and the bat cracked, and the ball sailed into the ether. It soared into the sky as small as a tiny aspirin. It soared into the right-field bleachers, and strangely, we all cheered for him—even the Twins fans—to watch a man love adversity, stand up there, and swing at all his enemies. Devil may care. He sends a baseball into obscurity, and he trots around the bases with a half-smile and a victor’s jog. Oh, how we loved him! Jackson once said he prays before a homer, and he tells the Lord, “He says, ‘Please God, let me hit one. I’ll tell everyone you did it.’” That suits me just about fine. Back in lower-middle-class Bloomington, I learned at the Met that there is no utopia. Nothing comes for free. There was no room for everybody to worry about not getting treated right. People on the bottom can rise up and learn. There’s room for the tall and the proud to fall, and there’s room for the lower bottom-feeders to rise up. Those are the low-down truths. If they say to sell hot dogs, sell hot dogs and smile. If you spill some mustard, rub it on your pants and wash your hands and keep going. My favorite vendor was an aging black man named Paps. He sold beer (which I did not do or drink to this day), but I admired how Paps sold it. He was at least seventy-five years old, and he smoked a pipe while he sold. He weighed about two