Alex Becker
With the implementation of the pitch clock and total revitalization of the game, baseball is back and better than ever before. The renewed success of the league is in part to several changes the commissioner Robert Manfred and the league have made over the past few seasons, as well as one major trend taking over all of drunken sports fan social media. I’m talking about the 9-9-9 challenge.
Now the 9-9-9 challenge isn’t anything new, it’s been around since last year. However, with the new pitch clock and shorter game lengths, it has become increasingly more difficult to accomplish and thus significantly more interesting.
If you are unaware of the 9-9-9 challenge, it’s about to change the way you think about baseball. The challenge is simple: 9 beers and 9 dogs down the hatch in 9 innings. For those of you math wizs out there, that exactly one hot dog and beer consumed per inning.
While the challenge is difficult with some games ending in under two hours due to the new rule change, time isn’t the hardest thing about completing the challenge. Instead, due to our deteriorating economy and inflation rising faster than Florida’s sea level, it appears that the biggest obstacle in the way of many completing the 9-9-9 challenge is money.
Ballparks have always been scam, we know this. Yet, prices nowadays have gotten more out of control than Henry Rugg’s corvette. Due to the high prices, the 9-9-9 challenge could cost an individual over $100 just to complete it, not to mention the actual price of the ticket. Thus, with these ridiculous and bluntly unfair prices, I have decided to find out what stadiums have the lowest total 9-9-9 cost. Here are my findings (all prices come from USA Today).
The cheapest hot dog can be found in Miami at a Marlins game in LoanDepot Park for a mere $3. Meanwhile, in Baltimore, the Orioles are charging a fee of $8.25 per dog. That means you can get almost three Marlins dogs for the price of an O’s dog. That’s straight up highway robbery, classic Baltimore.
In terms of beer, the Mariners in Seattle charge the cheapest rate of $0.33 per ounce ($3.96 for a 12 oz pour), while the Dodgers make you pay a dollar per ounce. I guess a $12 beer in LA isn’t that crazy, but for those of us who don’t have Kardashian money, $12 is better off spent on scratch offs.
With these totals, I have calculated that a Marlins game would be cheapest to accomplish the 9-9-9 challenge. With $3 hot dogs and $5.04 beers, the 9-9-9 challenge would cost $72.36. Up in LA, the 9-9-9 challenge comes in pretty damn steep at $169.83 as dogs cost $6.99 and beers up to $11.88. If you factor in ticket prices, a Marlins 9-9-9 would be around $100 (there are some silver linings to having an awful team), while a Dodgers challenge would add up to close to $250. Imagine paying a quarter of a thousand dollars to drink cheap beer, anything but beef hot dogs, and sit sandwiched in between sweaty people in wife beaters yelling in an unrecognizable language. Sure, you get the same at a Marlins game, but at least you can have the whole section to yourself.
