As a teenager in Brooklyn I couldn’t wait to show up at my part time job, selling hot dogs at Dodger games at Ebbets Field in the mid 1950s. I would sometimes skip school just to spend more time hawking franks around the aging ball park during those final three wonderful seasons, 1955 thru 57, when the Dodgers played major league baseball in Brooklyn.
Nowadays, when I attend Dodger games in Los Angeles I watch fans eat the six dollar plus Dodger dogs by the thousand. These franks are sanitary. They come out of spotless industrial kitchens and meet every possible health standard.
The 20 cent hot dogs I sold at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn had a slightly different provenance. The water that the franks were sitting in would often turn mustard-colored in the tray, and on hot summer days you’d be sweating into it.
We also carried a box of rolls, mustard in an open plastic container and a large fork to spear the hot dogs. If the fork or the mustard stick fell on the ground - No problem! - You wiped it off with your handkerchief.
“Hot frank on a roll!” That’s what we would yell as we squeezed our way around the tight rows and aisles of the stadium built in 1912. If a fan in the middle of a row signaled that he wanted a 20 cent hot dog, we would ask the person on the end to pass it down to him.
Sometimes we would put the frank in the wax paper we’d been given generally though, we would just pass it on with our bare hands, particularly if things were really busy.
As the frank worked its way down the row, some joker would occasionally palm the dog and when the empty roll reached the guy who ordered it, he would angrily refuse to pay. Shouting would then ensue, with the vendor demanding to be paid 20 cents, and the angry fan claiming there was no dog in the bun.
More often that not, the vendor came out on the short end of the deal, as the section would erupt with no-so-gentle calls for the vendor to get out of the way and stop blocking the game.
Hot Dog Suspension
I was suspended from the hot dog job for two weeks because of an incident that occurred while I was working in the upper left field stands during an intense Dodgers-Giants game.
Giants fans would come to Brooklyn with a passion that matched the fury that Dodgers fans would bring to games at the Polo Grounds, where the Giants played home games.
On one afternoon in 1956, the rivalry was hot. There was tension on every pitch. The stadium was packed. Hot dog sales were booming.
When my tray of franks was sold out I ran down the narrow ramp to get my fill of fresh hot dogs.
But I tripped and dropped everything.
I picked up my fork, the empty frank tray and the mustard stick, but the mustard vat itself was missing.
Then I looked down at the deck below. There was a man, covered in mustard, shaking his fist. An usher reported me to the boss.
The fan was given $80 on the spot to buy a new raincoat. The boss, Morris Rothenberg told me “You’re suspended for two weeks.”
Chased Out The Stadium
The vendor job was dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with hot dogs. Many of the teens selling franks, peanuts and score cards were, like me, smart-mouth teenagers from the Brooklyn neighborhood. One day we were sitting in the reserve seats along third base, waiting for the crowd to be let into the stadium.
The Dodgers were out on the field, going through their pre-game warm ups. One of the vendors noted that Roger Craig, a pitcher, had extremely big ears, and the guy sitting next to me yelled out, “Hey Dumbo fly away.”
Normally, this was not a big deal. Many of the players Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese Gil Hodges put up with us; some were even nice to us. But less experienced players, particularly those from rural areas regarded us locals as a nuisance. And while this was not the first time that Craig’s ears had been the subject of public scrutiny, it was one time too many because he wheeled and charged, leaping the small fence that separated the field from the seats.
What’s more, he seemed to be coming straight for me. Filled with fear, I jumped up, sprinted down the nearest ramp and escaped through the only gate to the street that was open. I lost about $10 in quarters, dimes and nickels of my own money that I had in my apron pockets to make change.
When I returned about ten minutes later, they told me that Craig came up to the kid who had made the Dumbo remark, grabbed him by the collar and told him, “If I ever hear that again, I’m going to bury your (bleeping) head.”
The kid kept saying, “I swear it wasn’t me Roger, I swear it wasn’t me.”
The Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958 and Ebbets Field has vanished. While both have faded from New York memory, they’re alive for me.
At Dodger games in LA these days, I’ll catch myself searching for the hot dog vendors. Nobody’s yelling “Hot franks on a roll!” anymore. Instead, today’s hot dogs are sold by busy people working behind a counter.
The franks today come in those shiny clean wrappers, but they still remind me of vendors in white suits, loose change and the sound of falling mustard.
(Fifty years later, I interviewed Roger Craig on Old Timers Day at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles when I was working as a freelance reporter for the Dodgers cable network. Roger was such an affable and friendly guy, big smile and a North Carolina twang. Of course, I didn’t bring up the time when he caused me to run for my life out of Ebbets Field.)
