Peanuts and Cracker Jack: The Gastronomy of American Ballparks
- Sep 1
- 5 min read
As we continue yet again on our journey through America’s pastime, it is time to turn our attention to the ballpark atmosphere. This week, we will specifically be talking about hot dogs, peanuts, Cracker Jack, cold beer, and other favorite ballpark foods. Food is the one thing that can unite a culture above everything else. While baseball does a great job bringing people together, it pales in comparison to a good meal. We can argue about religion, politics, and even sports until we are blue in the face, but when food is laid out on the table, all of that is set aside. Ballpark bites have a spectacular ability to make defeats easier to watch and speed up even the slowest of games.
How the Sausage is Made
The ballpark frank is the perfect place to begin our discussion on the stadium eats that baseball is known for. Hot dogs, bratwurst, Polish sausages, Dodger Dogs, no matter what you call them, they are the definitive baseball snack and will never be topped. While the hot dog is the most popular ballpark food, selling nearly 20 million dogs every Major League Baseball season, this hasn’t always been the case.
Before explaining the history of hot dogs at baseball games, I would like to issue a warning to anyone who is curious about hot dog history and wants to give it a Google search. I could walk through downtown Boston in head-to-toe Yankee gear… and I still wouldn’t be as afraid as I am googling hot dog history; man wasn’t meant to know how the sausage is made. I would argue that the nutrition facts on a package of hot dogs are more unread than work emails after five o’clock. With that being said, let’s continue to learn about the quintessential ballpark bite.
Hot dogs, as we know them, can be traced all the way back to early sausages over 5,000 years ago, around 3,100 BC. These early sausages were made from a variety of salted meats packed into casings in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. Sausages made their way to ancient Greece as depicted in Homer’s The Odyssey, comparing Odysseus to a “Sausage with fat and blood”. The sausage went through many changes until it came to Germany. Germans perfected the sausage and then brought the delicacy to the United States. In the late 1800s, the St. Louis Browns baseball team, which would eventually become the Baltimore Orioles, started selling German frankfurters at their home games. There was a large German population in St. Louis, including the owner of the team, and the ballpark franks were a big hit. A fun point about early sausages at baseball games is that while sausages were sold at games in the late 1800s, the hot dog bun wasn’t invented until the early 1900s, meaning the sausages were often a messy snack.
Today, the hot dog is the most celebrated food in all of baseball. There are $1 hot dog promotions throughout baseball at all levels, the Milwaukee Brewers have an entire costumed mascot race dedicated to everyone’s favorite ballpark food, and until recently, I had never gone to a baseball game without getting a hot dog or bratwurst.
Norworth and Tilzer’s Famous Tune
“Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is obviously the most famous baseball song, but it is also ranked third as the most recognizable song in the United States, only behind “Happy Birthday” and “The Star-Spangled Banner”. The song was released in the early 1900s, right when baseball was taking off across the country, and documents what fans are to expect when they go to the ballpark.
Peanuts and Cracker Jack are baseball staples and were both popularized by the song. Peanuts became a common baseball snack in the 1800s as they were an easy snack that was gaining popularity at the time. Cracker Jack wasn’t super popular until the song came out. The snack had been invented in the late 1800s but wasn’t sold in stadiums until 1907, just one year before the song was released. After the release of the tune, Cracker Jacks could be found at every stadium, and the prizes in the package were often baseball cards starting in the early 1910s.
While peanuts and Cracker Jacks have been replaced by other crunchy snacks like sunflower seeds and popcorn, you can always find someone keeping the tradition alive. If anything, we will all keep singing about the famous ballpark eats every seventh-inning stretch.
Beer at the Ballpark
While alcohol at the ballpark has been found in nearly every single baseball stadium since the late 1800s, the league has had an interesting relationship with beer through the years. Today, there are famous stadiums with domestic breweries as the corporate sponsor (Coors Field in Colorado and Miller Park before being renamed to American Family Field in Milwaukee), but this wasn’t always the case.
In St. Louis, the Cardinals were looking to name their new stadium. The team was owned by the Busch family, of Anheuser-Busch fame, and they wanted to name the stadium after their most famous brew, Budweiser. The league vetoed the name as they didn’t want alcohol brands to sponsor stadiums. The family decided to name the stadium after their own last name, and now two more Busch Stadiums have carried on the tradition. Shortly after the stadium was opened, the Anheuser-Busch company decided to create a new beer with the name Busch, working around the league’s veto.
Alternative Stadium Snacks and Where We Go from Here
As I said before, there was only one time I didn’t have a hot dog at a baseball game, and that was last summer at Oracle Park in San Francisco. With Oracle Park’s location right on the water, I had to get the crab roll sandwich instead of the typical hot dog. Today, you can find pretty much any food you want at the ballpark, whether it is the tiramisu helmet at Yankee Stadium or the street tacos at Petco Park in San Diego.
Ballpark food is always changing, but as our tastes change, we can still count on sitting down at the ballpark and having food that will elevate our experience. While on the topic of the ballpark atmosphere, I will leave you with this short clip that demonstrates how our ballpark food, more specifically, ballpark vendors, add to the baseball experience.
Sources
Cappiello, E. (2023, January 23). When MLB Vetoed ‘Budweiser Stadium,’ the Busch Family Put Their Own Name on the Ballpark. Then, They Launched Busch Beer. VinePair. https://vinepair.com/articles/story-behind-busch-stadium/
Everyone gets a hot dog at games. ... But why? (n.d.). MLB.Com. Retrieved September 1, 2025, from https://www.mlb.com/news/history-of-iconic-mlb-ballpark-food-explained
Foods, P. (2024, July 15). Origin of Sausage: Where Did Sausage Come From? Premio Foods. https://www.premiofoods.com/origin-of-sausage/
From the Odyssey to Kobayashi: A brief history of the hot dog | The Week. (n.d.). Retrieved September 1, 2025, from https://theweek.com/articles/462511/from-odyssey-kobayashi-brief-history-hot-dog
#Shortstops: Doggone Delicious | Baseball Hall of Fame. (n.d.). Retrieved September 1, 2025, from https://baseballhall.org/discover/shortstops/doggone-delicious
Stanton with a Homerun! 116 MPH! #yankees #mlb #mlbbshorts. (n.d.). [Video recording]. Retrieved September 1, 2025, from https://www.youtube.com/shorts/toaj19t5GDc
Take Me Out to the Ball Game. (n.d.). Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved September 1, 2025, from https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200153239/
The history of the hot dog – Bar-S Foods. (n.d.). Retrieved September 1, 2025, from https://www.bar-s.com/food-for-thought/the-history-of-the-hot-dog/