‘A silly sports tradition:’ Selling hot dogs the old fashioned way at Oakland Ballers games

The 53-pound, aromatic hot dog steamer has seen more baseball games than the average fan ever will.

Most modern vendors said goodbye to those portable steamers long ago. Instead of lugging a giant steel box up and down stadium steps, they carry bags of foil-wrapped hot dogs, the moisture leaking into the buns as the dogs start to shrivel.

But not Mike Davie.

There’s a new ketchup toter in town, and he’s upholding the tradition set by legendary Bay Area vendor Jim Graff and former Oakland A’s vendor and unofficial mascot, “Hal the Hot Dog Guy.”

Using the same steamer Graff had made to sell hot dogs at Giants and A’s games long ago, Davie has enjoyed “nothing short of an amazing summer” hawking dogs at Oakland Ballers games.

“Every day is a good day at the Ballers game,” Davie said. “I can’t say that about other jobs I’ve had.”

The Ballers — the B’s — are approaching their final homestand this week. And if it goes well, they might sneak into the playoffs and extend their stay at the 4,000-capacity Raimondi Park into September. Their postseason push would align neatly with the A’s final games at the Coliseum, before that team moves to Sacramento in 2025 and then Las Vegas in 2028.

“The first couple games were a bit of a stumble,” said Davie. “I had to learn how to carry around that big steamer box.”

Davie, a social media marketing professional, was a vending newbie when Hal Gordon first approached him. But when Gordon — aka “Hal the Hot Dog Guy” — heard the Ballers were starting an Independent League team, he not only offered to share everything he knew about vending, he found himself a protege.

“The story of the A’s leaving town is about people who run things not caring about the Oakland community,” said Gordon, who stepped down in 2022 after the A’s declined his request for a more involved role. “I wanted to give Oakland a chance to continue on with some silly sports tradition. I think that’s what the Ballers have been about.”

Gordon sprang to baseball fan fame at the Coliseum in 2015. Inspired by Graff, Gordon wore a hand-tailored, red-and-white pinstripe vest and toted a portable hot dog steamer so old, he suspects the models are no longer in circulation.

Carrying hot dogs that were fresher and plumper than his competitors’, Gordon separated himself further with a custom, portable condiment station. At one point, it included 13 options: onions, relish, mayonnaise, sauerkraut, jalapenos, capers, Sriracha and an array of mustards, including some he had flown in from other states.

But it was Gordon’s personality and desire to connect with fans that made him so memorable. He often started chants, including his famous “Give me an A! What’s that spell?” He handed out autographed “Hal the Hot Dog Guy” baseball cards to kids and made people laugh with his trick ketchup bottle.

“There was a theory that the thing I’m doing is simple and stupid, but I thought there was always room to make it more interesting and better,” he said. “That’s what the goal was. The A’s really struggled with that concept.

“What’s funny is the whole reason I was there was because when (A’s owner) John Fisher hired (president) Dave Kaval in 2017, he showed up guns blazing, like, ‘We’re going to make this stadium hum again, and everything will be great and interesting and new.’”

Gordon said it was Kaval who wanted to pay some vendors a flat rate, instead of commissions, to encourage high-quality service and develop long-term relationships with regular fans.

Gordon and Graff were loving the new concept and finding creative ways to get better at their jobs. But Graff, who was 49 at the time, died suddenly on Christmas Day in 2019, just before the pandemic set in.

The following season was played to empty stands. And when Gordon went back to work in 2021, he said the A’s had ended their fans-first philosophy to vending.

“I was like, ‘fine, I will do it myself,'” he said. “They didn’t have the condiments after COVID, so I would go buy them myself and bring them to the stadium.”

At the end of the following season, Gordon was at the height of his baseball fame. He was also finishing his Ph.D. and looking for full-time work as an economist, when he sat down with the A’s to pitch them an idea. He’d come on as a full-time, salaried employee, he told them, using his economics expertise to develop ideas to help the A’s transition to a new stadium. He’d also continue selling hot dogs.

The A’s rejected the idea, and Gordon said good-bye.

Now the light-hearted hot dog action has moved to B’s territory, where Davie sells about 50 hot dogs a game. At a recent Friday night home game — a 4-0 win over the Boise Hawks — he set a new personal record: 115.

The commission was timely: Davie had just been laid off from his marketing job.

“It’s fine. It frees me up,” said Davie, who’s rapidly becoming known as “The Hot Dog Mayor.”

He’s hoping to expand his services and take his hot dog steamer to bars, beer gardens and festivals, while he searches for a new full-time gig. Meanwhile, he’ll finish the season as the Ballers’ lone hot dog vendor and hopes to continue next year.

Watching from afar, Gordon is proud — and thinks Graff would be too.

Gordon hasn’t eaten a hot dog in years; he’s a vegetarian. (He once spent hundreds of dollars trying to find a way to add a separate steamer section for veggie dogs, but it never panned out.) These days, he lives in Washington, D.C., where he and his wife are expecting their first child around the same time the A’s play their final game at the Coliseum.

“For now, I’m done vending,” Gordon said. “I’ve got a kid coming. I have all this other stuff going on. But there have been times in my life where I said ‘I’m done vending,’ and then I ended up coming back to it.

“You don’t make as much money as other jobs, but the worst day at your vending job, literally the worst that can happen is you sell nothing. But you still watch a baseball game.”

The Ballers will play their last regular season games at Oakland’s Raimondi Park now through Sept. 1. Tickets are 30% off with the code OAKLANDISH30.