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$25 Corn Dog Debuts At Chase Field

The D-Bat
(Photo by Peter O'Dowd-KJZZ)
The 18-inch D-Bat, left, goes on sale Friday at Chase Field.

The Arizona Diamondbacks play their first home exhibition game at Chase Field on Friday. But let’s ignore the game for a moment, because the real action will be inside the team’s kitchen.

"This thing looks like a bat!" said Chef Michael Snoke, who debuted the D-Bat at Chase Field last week for a few reporters.

Yes, the D-Bat. It's 18 inches of beef, skewered with a stick, wrapped in cornbread, stuffed with bacon, infused with cheddar cheese, and of course, jalapeños.

It goes on sale Friday when the D-Backs play the Chicago Cubs. Twenty-five dollars and it’s all yours.

Snoke said he's had an eye on the culinary competition around Major League Baseball for a while. Last season the Texas Rangers introduced the Boomstick, a two-foot hotdog for $26. The Washington National’s invented an eight-pound hamburger in 2012.  

Snoke explained his masterpiece is superior for a very simple reason: "It’s a corn dog, man. Everyone loves a corndog."

The first man to have tasted the D-Bat outside of the team’s inner circle is Bob McManaman, an Arizona Republic sports writer who got a sneak peak of the dog at Chase Field.

"It’s going down pretty good," he said soon after the epic meal. "So far no burps. It’s amazing. It’s got all kinds of flavor and I feel honored."

I’ll be honest. I felt left out. Snoke said the D-Bat is supposed to be shared, but there’s something unsettling about asking my fellow journalist for a bite. Anyway, McManaman may have been having eater’s remorse. 

"I’m not going to touch the fries because there’s no way I’m gonna get those down," he said, with concerns about his heart. "I’m probably gonna see a doctor tomorrow."

Snoke didn’t bother checking the nutritional value of his corn dog. If you’ve gotta ask, he said, you probably shouldn’t eat it. But come on. You’re dying to know. 

To solve the mystery, I asked ASU Nutritionist Simin Levinson. She's got this mean little tool on her computer. Type in a food and out comes all its dirty little secrets. Since there is no such thing as an 18-inch corndog in her database, Levinson settles for the traditional six-inch corndog. Multiply by three, and you get: 832 calories.

Add a few slices of bacon. Three ounces of cheddar cheese. Three servings of French fries and — voilà — 3,000 calories and about two days’ worth of sodium in one package, according to Levinson's calculation.

But Levinson said she understands the marketing savvy of a feast like this. Her 11-year-old kid is in love with the idea of eating a D-Bat. Fans will eat it up, she said.

"They’ll probably be taking pictures of it and posting it on Facebook and Instagram, and tweeting about this product. Hopefully they have a pocket full of statins and a defibrillator nearby so that in case they do go into cardiac arrest help will be an arm’s length away," the nutritionist joked.

For his part, the creator of the D-Bat says it’s supposed to be fun. Something to make your day at the ballpark memorable. And, Snoke said, if you want healthy, skip the corndog and get a salad.

Fair enough. 

Peter O’Dowd was a reporter and news director at KJZZ from 2009 to 2014.