Dollar Dog Night at Citizens Bank Park nearly turned into an episode of The Wire on Monday when the Phillie Phanatic pumped a high-caliber hot dog into some poor sap in a pig costume.
The porcine victim was a mascot for Hatfield Quality Meats—a Pennsylvania pork meat-packing company that sells hot dogs at Philadelphia Phillies and Washington Nationals home games.
Part of the Phanatic’s routine involves rolling out the mobile Hatfield hot dog launcher and shooting franks into the stands.
Baseball authors George Gmelch and J.J. Weiner write that the cannon is three-and-a-half feet long and generates 350 pounds per square inch of pressure.
“This [the pressure] allows the Phanatic Frank to reach the upper decks from the middle of the outfield,” they write in their book, In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People.
Holy. God.
That is a weapons-grade hot dog gun, with more than enough juice to pull off a seriously painful pork drive-by. The sportscasters working the game said the dog is traveling around 98 mph—which seems low, considering you can barely see it as it leaves the cannon.
The pig appeared to take the cooked-sausage bullet to the gut—which is a good thing. Two feet higher and McNulty and the Bunk would’ve caught another redball.
Fortunately, the packed-meat fastball didn’t harm the pig, and the Phanatic is not in a holding cell looking at 25 to life.
As for the cannon, we can only hope it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Letting the Phanatic handle this weaponized meat-slinger is risk enough. If it falls into Charlie Kelly’s hands, it’s all over.
On the Twitters.
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