Happiness is a Warm Hot Dog Gun

I have to admit that one of my favorite sports entertainment trends over the last few years has been the Hot Dog Gun. For those who don't know, the Hot Dug Gun is a large instrument in which you can load up hot dogs and then a mascot comes out and shoots the gun into the crowd in between innings at a baseball game or during time out of a basketball game. The very first time I saw this gun was at a Phillies game at the Vet a few years ago when the Phanatic came out to entertain like he normally does. Right then and there I knew that this gun would change the face of mascot entertainment for decades to come. Since that first encounter I have seen the hot dog gun at pretty much every major sporting event I attended, including one hilarious time in Pittsburgh at a Pirates game where they would send members of the entertainment crew into the crowd to scream out thing like "who wants a hot dog," while dancing in the aisles (pictured below).


I've never seen anyone (the bald guy) get so excited for hot dogs.

Last year the hot dog gun reached a new level when I saw it at a St. Joseph's basketball game in their tiny gym on campus where this seemingly harmless gun was almost transformed into a weapon if it had worked properly. Luckily for myself and those in attendance, the gun wasn't working right that night and they couldn't get any distance on the shots so the pig mascot had to resort to throwing the hot dogs into the crowd. Well, I attended the St. Joe's vs. Fordham two nights ago, and the hot dog gun was back and it was working better than I had ever seen it before. This is just an educated guess, but by my estimation, the gun was able to shoot the hot dogs out at least 80 mph, which is fine if you're at a baseball game and want to feed fans in the upper deck. The Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse seats just over 3,000 people, and I would be shocked to learn if everyone there made it out alive after this Hot Dog Gun Fiasco.

What you are about to see is graphic footage taken by my new digital camera from the night in question. While it may not seem like it, the hot dog that you see flying over the camera was actually just a few feet over my head. I feared for my life the other night (which should never happen at a basketball game unless it's in Detroit), and I was lucky to get out alive, unlike the poor unfortunate soul directly a few rows behind me who was put in the hospital and later died. The autopsy will only prove what we all know to be true: it was Death by Hot Dog.

WARNING: If there are small children in the room, please turn them away from the computer screen. This isn't pretty (much like the look of sheer terror on that poor girl's face).



JUST SO YOU KNOW: No one was killed (though the pig WAS brought in for questioning), I just wanted to see if I could successfully link a video I filmed up on this site.