The VICE Sports Guide to Horrific Foods (Maybe) Available at Big League Ballparks

For a long time, baseball was a peaceful meditation on order amongst the chaos. Gentle angles, a set progression, rules to keep anything resembling madness at bay. Every game was a metaphor for the temporary nature of chaos and the eventual domination of history's events closing in on us. The Great American Counterpoint, an orderly, pastoral game providing temporary respite from the unstoppable cascading wave of capitalism's dominion over nearly every aspect of our lives.

But, I am afraid, a corruption has occurred. Americans and American lives are so wrapped up in the day to day promises and religion of capital—are so helplessly addicted to the rush of more, more, more, more pleasure, now, more food, more love, more winning, more, MORE MORE!—that the former temple of peace has been given over to the nation's greed-headed, taurine-fueled lust for food-based excess. In order to get fans in the door, baseball has elected to turn its ballparks into kitchens of horror.

It's sad, this procession of meme-burgers and clickbait-y garbage nachos. But it is news, and I am a reporter, and so I called around to concessions stands across baseball to learn about what's happening on "The Food Scene." Let's explore some of these new creations, together.

Hot Dogs. The Baseball Food, the official meat tube of the national pastime. In recent years, a broad cultural death urge has led stadium concession stands to wrap hot dogs in bacon, top them with Mac and Cheese, and sprinkle them with fried, finely sliced pig snout. The assumption is that people will eat these dogs as a sort of prank on themselves, and the assumption has borne out.

But what about a person with more sophisticated tastes? One who is accustomed, for instance, to the kind of Champagne-grade baseball you can only get at Busch Stadium? To them, the Cardinals offer THE GINSTICK HOTDOG, the only hot dog with the KICK of real gin.

Of course, you can't just pour gin onto a hot dog: liquor control commissions would have a fit, and it would also make the bun very soggy. But the good folks at BOW'ELS, America's TOP food concessions company, have developed a new food technology that makes it possible to bring these culinary powerhouses together at last.

A ¼ inch balsa wood stick, of the sort you might use to build a tiny toy pontoon boat, is placed in in a bucket of gin and weighed down with a brick. Over the course of a VERY eventful month, the air in the balsa wood is displaced by pure gin, locking the flavor deep inside. After the order is placed, a Ginstick Specialist at the concession stand removes one of the sticks from vacuum-sealed package in which it has been stored, so as to lock in flavor and placate ol' Elliott Ness, and then sloooooowly slides the Ginstick into a fresh boiled dog, infusing the meat with the rich flavor of gin.

Don't swallow the stick! It is a souvenir, yours to keep, with the CLASSIC Cardinals logo printed on the side!

Kids of all ages and inclinations will love this little smiling man made out of 100% real gum scraped from Wrigley Field benches, dipped in rubbing alcohol, blessed by a priest, an imam, a rabbi, a buddhist monk, and a scientist—to make sure there are no troubled spirits or curses left behind, safety first—stuck with a pair of SWANKY edible licorice glasses, and given a hand-carved smile. Can you eat Gum!? Yes!^ You can.^^ It tastes good, and it is also functional as gum^^^!

A celebration of San Diego's glorious history as a center of boat building, nautical glory, and American sea power, The Barge is a novelty "Garbage Barge" bowl filled with mashed potatoes (dyed black, using food-grade coloring pigment) and raisins. Give it to your child, so they can dream about a glorious future building seaworthy trash receptacles.

What we have here are some chunks of meat, in a box, with a red-colored sauce. Telling you what the meat is ruins the dish, which is predicated in part on a confrontation with the unknown, but suffice to say: sometimes it is cow, some other times it is chicken. It has been rabbit, and it could also be buffalo. One thing it definitely isn't, is feral animals from the Philadelphia metropolitan area. It isn't that. We can afford real meat. We are not paying Ryan Howard so much that we can't afford non-trapped meat.

Now, have we trapped meat to shore up a stiff supply? Yes. But these were acceptable eating animals, not vermin or pets. Those we always take out of the traps and release, and that is 100 percent the truth. Also, there are no peanuts in the box, so you don't need to worry about food allergies.

^LEGAL NOTICE FROM VICE MEDIA LLC: You cannot eat Gum!

^^LEGAL NOTICE FROM VICE MEDIA LLC: You can't.

^^^LEGAL NOTICE FROM VICE MEDIA LLC: It tastes vaguely like rubbing alcohol and immediately breaks into pieces and slides down your esophageal passage and into your stomach, giving the diner a "Light Poisoning". Do not attempt to chew Gum!.