Baseball season is officially upon us — go Phils — which also mean it’s time for baseball fans to start snarfing down hot dogs. And with 2,430 regular season games to be played over the next few months, the sheer number of hot dogs to be devoured is astounding.

The folks at the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council (you might remember them from the whole hot dogs are deadly debate a little while back) expect that nearly 21.4 million hot dogs will be served at ballparks this season. According to their calculations, that’s enough dogs to:

– Round the bases 29,691 times
– Stretch from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to Coors Field in Denver with enough left over to give a hot dog to every fan at every Colorado Rockies’ home game for the entire 2010 season.

While Fenway Park in Boston is the 3rd-smallest capacity major league park, BoSox fans apparently love eating hot dogs. The Council predicts Fenway fans will eat the most hot dogs this season — 1.67 million.

Second on the hot dog list is a city known for its hot dog snobbery, Chicago. The council’s crystal ball predicts that Cubs fans will cover 1.54 million hot dogs covered in sport peppers, onion, radioactively green relish, fluorescent yellow mustard, celery salt and a partridge in a pear tree… really anything but ketchup.

The best baseball fans in the world are the third most-hungry for hot dogs.My kin in Philadelphia are expected to gorge themselves on 1.45 million hot dogs at Citizens Bank Park this season.

The Dodgers and the Mets ranked 4th and 5th on the Council’s list with predictions of 1.2 and 1.15 million dogs, respectively.

What’s your favorite kind of hot dog? Is ketchup a must-have or a no-no? How badly will the Phillies thrash the entire rest of the National League East?

[ed. note– Whatever, ketchup is for fries. Go, Cubs, Go… -Meg]

Hot Dogs Still Reigning MVP of Ballpark Concessions [NHDSC]

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