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Have you ever gone to a baseball game and bought a hot dog? As you bit into it, you might have remembered the famous advertising jingle “Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner!” If not for Harry Mozely Stevens, however, you might have been singing “Oh, I wish I were a dachshund sausage on a stick” instead. Harry Stevens was born in 1855 in Derby, England. The oldest son of a railway worker, Stevens grew up to become a food caterer. In the 1880s, he and his family immigrated to Ohio where he began to develop a plan to cater to baseball stadiums. By 1901, Stevens was catering baseball games but not doing as well as he had hoped. One day he got the idea to have his salesmen go out and buy all the “dachshund” sausages they could find. At the time dachshund sausages were sold on a stick, but Harry thought to put them in rolls instead. He then had his vendors go around the baseball grounds yelling, “They’re red hot. Get your dachshund sausages here.” They were an instant hit. One day a cartoonist, Tad Dorgan, drew a barking dachshund sitting inside a roll. He wasn’t sure how to spell dachshund so he used the term “hot dog” instead. The drawing and the name became famous. From that moment, the hot dog was permanently identified with baseball. Today
over a billion hot dogs are eaten each year. Whether you grill them
or boil them, add every topping imaginable, or just eat them plain,
nothing beats the taste and aroma of a hot dog in a soft warm bun.
So the next time you are at your favorite ball park or just sitting
down to enjoy a good tasting hot dog, remember to thank Harry Stevens.
Without his idea of using the bun all those years ago, your condiments
would not have a warm place to lay. |
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Hot
Dog!
