Baseball is boring again; my attention is steered to inspection results at parks

I grew up in the 90s near Toronto (that’s in Canada) – a fun time since the Blue Jays were winning World Series titles. As I got older, the Jays sucked and baseball became boring. To keep my interest I got into a rotisserie baseball league. I’ve been in the same league for 14 years with the same bunch of nerdy guys. I’ve finished in last place, a league record, four times (which comes with it’s own toilet-shaped trophy).

I have never won.

I thought that this year was my time as I dominated the league all season and even started to spend the pool winnings in my head. Then I got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs.

Hubris.

Now that I’m out, I’ve lost interest in baseball again.

There are some folks at Business Insider who seem to also find a baseball game on its own boring and spice it up with looking at inspection violations at Major League Baseball parks (a rehash of a story from earlier this year, which was a rehash of an ESPN story from last year).

$7.50 for one hot dog? What choice do you have? (Pretty tasty, though.)For those kinds of prices, fans would expect the highest quality from their food preparers, but things are not always what they seem. It’s a tall order to feed 52,000 people in a single night and keep the the kitchen spic and span. Most MLB ballparks can’t (totally) pull it off. So we looked up the public food inspection records for every Major League Baseball stadium to see who’s the best — and worst — at keeping your food clean.

My favorite inspection infractions came from PNC Park in Pittsburgh:

No soap at hand wash stations.

Raw meat stored at 54 degrees.

Cheese and hot dogs stored between 45-49 degrees.

Of note, Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays must be the pinnacle of risk reduction:

The Toronto Blue Jays are the only major league baseball stadium on the list that received no violations last season.
 

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About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.