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WNPR News sports coverage brings you a mix of local and statewide news from our reporters as well as national and global news from around the world from NPR.

Eating 69 Hot Dogs in Ten Minutes is a Piece of Cake

Michael
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Flickr Creative Commons

Competitive eating has grown far beyond the popular event at local fairs where winners won blue ribbons for eating the most pies.

Today, it's a global sport with its own league, dedicated fans, and professional competitors who train to eat more food than seems humanly possible. Major League Eating, the sports governing body, is largely responsible for the change. Public relations executives Richard and George Shea professionalized the sport, attracting larger crowds every year for more than a decade. This July 4,  Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Championships, the Olympics of competitive eating, drew 40,000 fans to the Coney Island contest.

But, the more I read about competitive eating, the more  I think about Eight Men Out, the book and movie about the 1919 Black Sox scandal. The scandal itself became a way of looking at the way baseball and the White Sox were structured in those days with the miserly owner, Charles Kaminsky, paying  the players only a tiny fraction of what they were really worth to him.

So it goes 95 years later with Major League Eating, where the people that run the contest and collect the ad money make millions while the people wolfing down the dogs and wings and training in ways that may seriously compromise their health get a few thousand if they're good and they're lucky.  The contracts these eaters sign even slightly resemble the exploitive contracts offered to black artists in the early days of rock and roll. 

And, it's not without risk. There is some concern about the long term health of the athletes.

So, what makes it all worthwhile? We'll talk about the joys and the risks. 

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Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.
Chion Wolf is the host of Audacious with Chion Wolf on Connecticut Public.
Betsy started as an intern at WNPR in 2011 after earning a Master's Degree in American and Museum Studies from Trinity College. She served as the Senior Producer for 'The Colin McEnroe Show' for several years before stepping down in 2021 and returning to her previous career as a registered nurse. She still produces shows with Colin and the team when her schedule allows.

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