-- Pirates: 4-- Nationals: 5
-- Sold: 72 beer, 69 peanut/Crackerjack
Not very often a ballpark vendor makes national news, but it happened today: Arnie "Peanut Dude" Murphy died. Known for the accuracy of his long-distance tosses around the seats at Houston's Minute Maid Park, he was clocked at 42-mph on a peanut toss, was a six-time Aramark All-Star Vendor and was named "Best Ballpark Vendor" by the Houston Press. I'd never heard of the man before (and I disagree with the assertion that he "may be the most famous peanut vendor in America" -- that honor goes to the Dodgers' Roger Owen) but he was apparently institution enough to be memorialized by National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
So in my mind, I dedicated tonight's vend to the Peanut Dude, buy selling as many bags of peanuts and Crackerjack as I could. Plenty of kids' groups on Family Night added up to three loads sold, on top of the beer, tossing those bags deep into the sections -- drawing attention from the rest of the group and stoking sales -- though with perhaps less accuracy than earned the Peanut Dude his fame.
** Note: Photo stolen from Flickr, which noted that it was in turn stolen from a book called Working at the Ballpark. Ain't free content great?
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