Blue Jays Fans Shatter Hot Dog Record On 'Loonie Dog Night'

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Hot dogs have been a staple at baseball games since the start of the 20th century, and MLB teams tend to move plenty of them over the course of a game. However, Blue Jays fans went above and beyond while taking advantage of the Tuesday tradition known as “Loonie Dogs Night.”

Hot dogs may not have earned a shoutout alongside peanuts and Cracker Jacks in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” but at the risk of disrespecting ice cream served up in tiny helmets, I’d argue that particular concession item reigns supreme at the ballpark.

There is appropriately some beef among historians when it comes to determining who was primarily responsible for making hot dogs the staple they are. Chris Von der Ahe, the German immigrant who owned the franchise that became the St. Louis Cardinals, is commonly cited as the first person to peddle them at games, but some people credit Harry M. Stevens, a concessions magnate who supplied the New York (Baseball) Giants, with popularizing them.

Regardless of who was responsible, hot dogs are still all the rage at baseball games—as evidenced by the popularity of the 9-9-9 Challenge, where they play a central role.

You’ll usually have to shell out a fair amount of dough if you want to attempt that during an MLB game, but fans who attended a recent Toronto Blue Jays contest got a break with the help of a promotion that resulted in the sale of a staggering number of frankfurters.

Blue Jays fans broke a record by buying more than 90,000 hot dogs on “Loonie Night”

A hot dog at a Blue Jays game will set you back $3.49 (around $2.50 in Freedom Dollars) this season. However, Schneiders, the company that supplies tubed meat to the concession stands at Rogers Centre, sponsors a “Loonie Dogs Night” on Tuesdays that allows fans to get one for just $1 (~75 cents).

That promo was rolled out for the first time in 2019, and fans have embraced it as a bit of a challenge. The 76,627 hot dogs that were downed during a game in 2023 set a record that was broken when attendees went through 84,371 of them during a showdown with the Yankees toward the end of July this season, but it didn’t take very long for the bar to be raised yet again.

Toronto may have walked away with a 7-5 loss to the Twins on Tuesday, but according to BlogTo, the 42,235 spectators in attendance for the matinee earned a W, as the running tally that was tracked on screens throughout the stadium hit 92,221 when everything was said and done.