Stormy Skies

If you’re buying fast food at a baseball game, you’re doing it wrong.

I’ve been going to baseball games since before I could ingest solid food, so let me be the first to tell you, Famous-Star-devouring-man, that you’re looking the fool as you shovel those branded french fries down your throat. 

Let’s start with the fact that such food options should not even be available at a Major League Baseball game. I’m not complaining about Hebrew National brand hot dogs, or Orville Redenbacher popcorn. I’m talking about Angels Stadium pimping itself out by serving Jack in the Box and Chronic Tacos to the masses.

I’ll cede pizza and hamburgers to the teeming masses, you’re gonna eat what you’re gonna eat, but if you’re going to get something that is not a hot dog for lunch or dinner, then at least grab something from the ballpark’s grill. I’ve been to seven Major League Baseball stadiums, and I have never had a problem finding something off the grill for my fiance. If I can do it, you can do it.

This problem started with my parent’s generation succumbing to every dietary request of their petulant, whiny children. The family wants In-N-Out for dinner? No problem. But wait, Jonny decided he can’t eat red meat, potatoes, or anything with a sodium percentage higher than .4. Well, let’s stop by a Whole Foods for the 7-year-old and THEN go to In-N-Out. 

An even worse crime is bringing a bag of Burger King food into a McDonald’s restaurant. The food is practically the same, and if you can’t convince your 8-year-old daughter of that, you probably should consider a new career choice, parenting isn’t for you. You get the idea. When you go to a baseball game with your son and daughter, you are prohibited from buying them something they can get at a drive through - unless, Hebrew National finally starts selling their dogs at a standalone restaurant. 

Don’t be “that guy” when you go see Albert Pujols this summer with the rest of the fair-weather sheep of Orange County. Buy yourself a hot dog, throw some mustard on it and avoid referring to Pujols as “El Hombre” or “Pujolio” or whatever other god-awful nickname the southern Californian marketing team will thrust upon you.

Your grandchildren will thank you.

I chose to do my second field assignment on COM internships because I was right in the middle of the process of getting mine approved. I thought I was being a little clever by choosing to write about something that was spawned thanks to my last field assignment, but maybe that’s just my vanity speaking.

Maybe.

Regardless, it’s getting to that point in my education quest that I’ve started hearing the grumbling from fellow upper-classmen (and women) about the arduous process of finding an internship, and then getting it approved by the revered - if not feared - Dr. Kallan. After my experience with the whole process, which appears to have been much easier than many students, I was curious to see what it was that made it all such a pain in the neck.

What I found was a lot of what we as students hear about getting a real job. As internships become more and more competitive, it becomes harder for students to find internships that offer more than a class in paper-pushing. As the number of good internships goes down, and the number of students looking for internships goes up, a funnel is created.

I felt like this field assignment went fine, although to be honest, I don’t think it’s as interesting as either of the other two field assignments I did. The interviews were also a little harder to set up because of conflicting schedules with my sources, but it’s all over now, minus the editing process.

This process just gets easier and easier, something I have the Poly Post to thank for. Once you’ve written 600 word stories twice a week for eight weeks, this 1,000 word article doesn’t seem so hard anymore.