And a merry Independence Day to you, sir!

Dear readers,

May your weiners be piping hot, your buns be toasted and your ale cold on your palate. Let the summer sun warm the flesh, and let an ocean breeze be most cooling on your moustache.

Settle down next to a portable wireless and revel in our freedom to listen to chapter after chapter of base-ball whilst sating ourselves with vittles and victuals procured from local merchants.

Cheers the sight of bunting at each and every parade, and holler gaily with every passing demonstration by the marching Women's Auxiliary.

And when our Heroes in Flannel, the Boston Red Stockings, plate ace after ace against the hapless Seattles, hoist your pilsner and be proud for America!

Your friend and confidant, patriot and Rooter, chronicler with Mr. Stuffy McInnes all things Red Stockinged and heroic on the base-ball pitch,

Hurdy Chadwick
Westbrook, Maine

Delightful weiners!

(Breaks in the contesting schedule allow Hurdy and Stuffy to muse on subjects other than the comings-and-goings of out beloved Boston squad. Today, Stuffy offers opinions on an important topic: Ball-park comestibles.)

In my pereginations across this fine land, I avail myself of all opportunities to experience the local base ball sporting scene. For tho’ it is our national past-time, base ball develops unique characteristics according to its home region. Such local specialities include:
- “The Baltimore Chop”
- “The Texas-Leaguer”
- “The Akron Mock-Muff”
- “The New Amsterdam Shoe-horn”
- “The Poughkeepsie Pelt”

So during my recent sojourns, when dispatches to this fine record were meager, it became my duty and pleasure to observe local base ball as played in the Borough of Queens, New York, home of the Metropolitans of the National League.

There, a team of cigar-chomping bankers swindled the populace into constructing (an admittedly glorious) new ball-park, complete with dazzling amenities that are sure to be hallmarks of base-ball’s future -- including but not limited to powder rooms for the ladies in attendance!

Parading through the grounds, my experienced eye did not register the Metropolitans signature maneuver -- “The Flushing Flop” (For on this evening, the local squad achieved a dramatic “win” in extra frames).

Instead, I was gobsmacked by the victuals on display at the stadium canteen. Like all sensible Rooters, I find that a steaming weiner provides the perfect accompaniment for an evening of fine hurling and swatting. As luck would have it, wiener-stands are plentiful in this ball-park.

Upon procuring my snack, I searched for piquant mustard to dispense upon my tube-steak, as is my custom. Forthwith, I was directed to a steam-table displaying a cornucopia of condiments and dressings befitting a rajah! Alongside the traditional mustard and new-fangled but dubious “cat-sup,” I found:
- The Teutonic cabbage-based delicacy known as “sour-kraut”
- Pickled “relish”
- A saucy concoction of onion slices in red gravy
- And a pile of bright-green vegetable discs thinly sliced for ease-of-deployment between bun and frankfurter

The menu-poster informed me that these green beauties were known as “jalapeno peppers” – which I gleaned from the name’s Spanish derivation to be an imported fruit from South of the Border. Indeed, moldering letters sent from my Uncle Travis McInnes during the Mexican War contain obscure references to a fiery local pepper that soldiers found beneficial to their digestion.

“When in Rome,” as the saying goes -- so I carefully assembled a mixture of silvery cabbage, verdant “relish,” slick red onions and circular “jalapenos” atop my weiner sausage. Taking a first, tentative bite, I was delighted by the mixture of sweet and savory flavors, and the way the textures complemented the toothy snap of the weiner’s casing.

Then, I felt a pleasant heat spreading across my palate, enhancing my senses even as my free hand flew upwards to signal a passing suds-slinger! Soon, I fell into the rhythm: Bite of dog, pleasant burn, sip of cooling lager. Bite of dog, pleasant burn, sip of cooling lager.

Rooters: It was a platonic dish. In all my years of base-ball dining, never have I had such a satisfying weiner!

As a result, I implore the concessions crew at Fenway Park to expand their dressing and condiment selection. Scour the ethnic enclaves within the Hub to source these fine delicacies!

I give you my word that even conservative Rooters will take a shine to a Fenway Frank festooned with the flavors of the globe, or my name isn’t:

Stuffy McInnes, Rooter.

Rejuvenating with the Grapefruit Circuit

Ahoy Rooters. I must thank the Hon. Hurdy Chadwick for helming this fine ship of base ball reportage in my recent absence. You see, I was called away from New England unexpectedly to assist my uncle Stuart McInnes, who got himself in a spot of trouble down south. Seems he has been taken in by a real estate swindler from the neigh-on-lawless state of Florida!

It’s a depressingly common confidence game -- some fast-talking binder-boy proffers the paperwork for a Cocoa-Nut plantation befitting a Rajah, but the property in question turns out to be an infernal mess of saw palmetto and venomous vipers not worth the stamps to mail the deed. I received a cable from Ol’ Stu seeking my assistance in recouping his loss (or at least finding a greater fool to take on the plot), and within hours I was steaming south in a Pullman car.

Some good, at least, has come of this unexpected journey: I am amidst the spring-training locales of several base-ball clubs, and managed a few hours yester-noontime to observe an exhibition contest between the Metropolitans of New York and the visiting Detroits!

The red-earth of the base-paths and green of the out-field were a vision of Heaven here on Earth! The whizzing of a delivered pill and the crack of ash against horsehide sounded like the Heavenly Host itself proclaiming Hallelujah! White flannel shone like hammered silver under the Sun’s benevolent rays! Steamed wieners and chilled lager paraded past my grandstand perch in an endless, delightful banquet!

I say, it was better than a belt of Duffy’s for curing the non-specific sense of malaise that often befalls a Rooter at this time of year. Alas, I must soon pack my straw boater and seersucker suit and trundle north to the still-gray environs of Maine, but I will be buoyed by the knowledge that Opening Day of the 2009 base-ball contesting season is a mere 10 days hence.