MILWAUKEE, Wis. There have been ups and downs in the career of Guido, an Italian sausage who races during every game at Miller Park, but reporters who cover the Milwaukee Brewers say they've never seen him looking more dejected than he did this morning when team owner Bud Selig announced his suspension.
Guido, in the lead.
"Guys, I'd really rather not talk about it right now," Guido said as he turned towards his locker. "I'm not having a good day, okay?" he snapped at a particularly persistent reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times.
In happier times.
Guido's suspension came after he tested positive for sodium lactate, sodium diacetate and sodium erythorbate, three performance-enhancing substances that produce a traditional "hot dog" color and improved texture in sausages. "It's Guido's own fault," said Guy Randall, a sports reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel. "He could have stuck to monosodium glutamate like the other sausages, but no--he always wanted that extra little edge."
"Say it ain't so, Guido."
The race, sponsored by Klement's Sausage Company, is held after the bottom of the sixth inning at every home game of the Milwaukee Brewers. Guido has consistently outpaced Bratt Wurst, Stosh, Frankie Further and Cinco over the years, leading some to suspect he was using drugs other than ketchup, mustard, relish and other approved condiments.
Selig: "What kind of trayfe junk is this--it's giving me heartburn!"
Selig has come under criticism for allowing the use of artificial ingredients in ballpark hot dogs to spread during his tenure, a fact that some attribute to the commissioner's dual role as baseball executive and Milwaukee-area auto dealer. "Bud brings a kosher hot dog from home for lunch every day," said Mel Warner, a reporter for Condiments Today, a trade journal that covers Major League Baseball's ketchup, mustard and relish dispensers. "He wouldn't know a nitrate if he fell over it."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
