You want to see greatness? The best hot dog eater in history, in his own very specific way, was greatness.
Joey Chestnut stuffs his mouth with hot dogs during a competition on July 4, 2019, at Coney Island in Brooklyn. Look, I understand that the hot dog eating contest is a joke.
Part of it is the vaudevillian spectacle of the whole enterprise, the carnival-barker freakshow spirit that makes the setting of Coney Island so apt. But, at the risk of coming across as if my bar for athletic entertainment has been set too low, the real reason I watch it is because I find the competition — and the competitors’ achievements — legitimately impressive. I mean, almost anyone several inches north of 6 feet can dunk a basketball.
To put Chestnut’s incredible run at the top of his sport in context, it’s important to understand the history of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. The event began in 1967 and was won by Walter Paul, a 400-pound truck driver. The contest was held on Memorial Day through 1978 until moving to July 4 in 1979; the 1981 winner was a man named Thomas DeBerry, who,, “downed 11 hot dogs in five minutes and then rushed off with his family to attend a barbecue.
A run like that — winning his first title at 23 and losing only one championship all the way into his 40s — is unparalleled in American sports, or any sport. Even if you think this sport is gross, or isn’t a sport at all, 16 titles in 17 years is absurd. That’s as many titles as Tom Brady, LeBron James and Derek Jeter combined. And Chestnut did it all while wearing a bib.
He was heavily favored to win this year as well. Alas: Now, unless Major League Eating and Chestnut can come to a peace agreement, we’ll never know. To take Joey Chestnut out of the hot dog eating contest is like booting Patrick Mahomes just two weeks before the Super Bowl. Chestnut is on a run that no other competitor has been on in my lifetime, and now, because of an ugly sponsorship battle, it’s being taken away from him and all of us. It’s a damn shame.
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