M's New Grand Salami -- When Team Gets Its Stadium, Fans Get A Better Hot Dog

When new owners bought the Seattle Mariners in 1992, already in the backs of their minds was the need to solve the key problem facing the franchise.

You may think it was the perennial losing, but that was easily solved with the hiring of manager Lou Piniella.

Or the vain attempts to attract sun-starved fans to a summer sport in a concrete cavern - which will end next summer with the opening of a taxpayer-financed, retractable-roof stadium.

Or the relief pitching . . . uh, well, that's not exactly fixed yet.

No, plans for next year to correct THE major flaw with the franchise come after hours of painstaking experiments and market research. Some details remain closely held corporate secrets. But this much is known:

There will be a better hot dog.

The "Mariner Dog" will be unveiled next July along with the new ballpark. Although the final product is not completely perfected, it will be an all-beef frank, with a natural casing, served open-faced on a toasted bun.

The frank will be so good, predicted Keith Reardon, general manager of the food concessionaire, Service America, that he'll sell 1.5 million in the first full year in the new stadium, or nearly twice the number now sold in the Kingdome. That means one of every two fans will buy one - even counting the people from meat-free Wallingford.

"They want their dog to be put on the map - like the Dodger Dog and the Fenway Frank," Reardon said of the Mariner management.

The drive for better ballpark food has been part-and-parcel of the nationwide focus on new stadiums. Like luxury seating and private stadium clubs, franchises have found one of the ways to separate fans from the money in their wallets is through better cuisine: the fish tacos at San Diego's Qualcom Stadium, for example, or the crab-cake sandwiches at Baltimore's Camden Yards.

The Mariners might have tried a new kind of salmon sandwich or other Northwest fare.

"We talked about doing that," said Randy Adamack, vice president for public relations. "But what people buy the most of is hot dogs, no matter what other variety of food you have. So we set a goal of having the best hot dog in baseball."

Origins: the `dachshund'

It is difficult to overstate the connection between baseball and hot dogs. In 1997, for example, fans bought 2.2 million of the league-leading Dodger Dog.

Sausages, themselves, have been around for centuries. Some historians date them to Babylon in the 15th century B.C. There is a mention in Homer's Odyssey, which dates to the eighth century B.C. And the name, itself, comes from the Latin "salsus," for salt, or "salcicius," for prepared with salt.

But the golden age of seasoned meat came in Medieval Europe, where cities competed for the title of birthplace of the sausage and where the modern names were coined for the cities in which they were produced: Frankfurt, Bologna, Vienna.

That history left the origins of the modern hot dog in some dispute. But the American Meat Institute, an industry group, dates it to 15th or 16th century Frankfurt and the invention of what was called the "dachshund," or "little dog sausage."

European immigrants brought it to America with them, and the first dachshund sausage was served in New York in the 1860s. The meat institute said that in 1871, Charles Felman sold 3,684 of the sausages in his first year operating a cart at Coney Island.

On a cold day in 1901, during a baseball game at the Polo Grounds in New York, concessionaire Harry Stevens was having no luck selling ice cream or soda. But Stevens hit a mother lode by going through the stands, hawking the sausages from a portable hot-water tank, shouting, "They're red hot. Get your dachshund sausages while they're red hot."

Tad Dorgan, a sports cartoonist covering the game, drew a picture of a barking dachshund in a roll and coined the term "hot dog" because he couldn't spell dachshund. Stevens went on to create one of the largest food concession businesses in the country.

But the hot dog's place in history was ensured in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.

A concessionaire, Anton Feuchtwanger, was serving the hot sausages along with white gloves so people could hold them while they ate. But patrons kept stealing the gloves. So Feuchtwanger's brother-in-law devised a long, soft roll. A fast food was born.

Since then, the little sausages have had a global reach beyond just ballpark fare.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt served hot dogs at dinner to the king and queen of England during a state visit in 1939.

In one of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's visits to the United States in the height of the Cold War, he tried a hot dog and announced that while Russia might be ahead in the missile race (it wasn't), America was producing a better sausage.

Grilled dogs win in survey

So it was with this backdrop - and bad publicity garnered by the Kingdome's hot dogs - that the Mariners approached their task.

The team conducted surveys and focus groups with some of its season ticketholders and with prospects for club seats and luxury suites.

Those surveyed said they were more likely to buy hot dogs or specialty sausages than any other food. Most said they would prefer an "all-beef, kosher hot dog," followed by a "traditional ball-park frank."

Among specialty sausages, the survey indicated that most people preferred Polish sausages, followed, in declining order, by kielbasa, bratwurst, Italian, spicy Italian and beer sausage. In fact, the survey indicated that while those in blue-collar jobs preferred Polish sausages, white-collar workers said they would choose a kielbasa. That may indicate more about snob appeal than refined palates. In reality, there's no difference between a kielbasa and a Polish sausage.

The survey also indicated that people preferred their hot dogs grilled. And their buns heated.

"Ideally," said Neil Campbell, who will oversee the new stadium's operations for the Mariners, "what folks like is a grilled hot dog like you do in your back yard at home."

But grills require a lot of room and air vents. (One of the drawbacks to the Kingdome dogs is that they are boiled because there are no vents at the concession stands.)

Campbell, who formerly managed the Kingdome and the stadium at B.C. Place in Vancouver, knows something about stadium hot dogs. One of his first jobs was managing a Pacific Coast League ballpark in Edmonton, Alberta, where the team owner also had a meat-packing plant. One year, he said, the Edmonton Trappers won the award for the best hot dog in baseball.

But Campbell said he at first was skeptical that enough hot dogs could be grilled quickly enough to serve the crowds in a major-league stadium.

The solution, developed by Service America, has more to do with how they look than how they taste.

The dogs will be cooked in a convection oven, which gets them hot enough to seal in the juices and kill any bacteria but doesn't give the appearance of grilling.

So after the dogs are heated in the oven, they will be placed on an electric grill. It's not required for cooking, but it will etch grill marks into the hot dogs to make them look right.

Reardon, the food concessionaire, said that the "presentation" will include vendors dressed in chef's uniforms. Customers will see them take the hot dog off a grill, put it in a toasted bun, then hand it over in an open cardboard container or "boat."

Armed with their market research, the Mariners decided to take their product out for a test drive.

The first rollout was this summer for about 1,000 people at the Bite of Seattle. The bun, which likely will be a part of the Mariner Dog, was produced by Gai's, the well-known Seattle industrial baker. The dog was an all-beef German wiener, sold by Bavarian Meats, a third-generation Seattle butcher. Most people liked the hot dog a lot, although a few thought the natural casing was a little tougher than they were used to.

"It is a premium hot dog," explained Manny Dupper, Bavarian's director of operations. His company produces 42 kinds of sausages, he said, and the beef wiener "is one of the spicier ones."

Anyone who wants their own preview can purchase the exact wiener at the Bavarian Meats retail store in the Pike Place Market. But it likely won't be the final Mariner Dog.

The reason? Naming rights.

After all, these are the people who brought you Safeco Field. That doesn't necessarily mean that for an annual payment, anyone can have the Mariner Dog named after them. But there will be, as they say, "promotional considerations."

The Mariners are talking to five major meat suppliers and expect the winning vendor to buy a luxury suite or stadium advertising. According to Bob Aylward, vice president for marketing, they also hope the vendor will promote the Mariner Dog in grocery stores.

Reardon, of Service America, said that any big-time meat packer will be able to produce the hot dog.

That is a little disappointing to some of the folks at Bavarian Meats, who liked the idea of supplying the Mariner hot dogs. Dupper said they could gear up to provide all the hot dogs the Mariners would need. But the Mariners are looking for a big company that could benefit from - and pay for - big-time advertising.

Dupper isn't convinced a mass-produced sausage will be of the same standard as his product.

"They could come close, but they wouldn't necessarily be the same," he said, keeping the exact recipe for his German wiener a trade secret.

Reardon said Service America hopes to do all this without raising the price of the hot-dogs in the stadium.

He said the eventual price likely will be about $1 for a kid's dog, (10 sausages to a pound,) $2.25 for a regular (eight to a pound,) and $4 for a quarter-pound hot dog. Although the prices aren't set, Reardon said they are realistic because the actual cost of the materials is small compared with labor, which is pretty much the same for good hot-dogs as bad ones.

Jerry Hofstatter, owner of Bavarian Meats, isn't as sure. He said, "You can't produce a Cadillac at Chevrolet prices."

David Schaefer's phone message number is 206-464-3141. His e-mail address is: dschaefer@seattletimes.com