While there's plenty of baseball on the July 4 holiday, there is another tradition that takes place in New York: The Nathan's Hot Dot Eating Contest.
Competitive eating king Joey Chestnut is attempting to get his 16th 'Mustard Belt' on America's birthday as he seeks to continue his run as one of the prolific dynasties in sports history.
That's all great and certainly worth noting, but I'm most interested in comparing Chestnut's overall earnings to those of a baseball player.
The following tweet comes from Front Office Sports:
Joey Chestnut has turned his eating empire into year-round income. America’s hot dog champion now earns over $500,000 annually
— with deals including:
Dude Wipes
Raising Cane’s
Wonderful Pistachios
Pepsi
His own line of dips and sauces
I'll be honest, that doesn't seem like enough money. You have to travel the country, workout endlessly and eat that many calories just for significant less than the salary of a utility bench player or a mop-up late inning reliever?
The Major League Baseball minimum salary is now $720,000 after the latest round of collective bargaining agreements. So Joey Chestnut makes more than $200,000 less than players who barely play on major league rosters.
Is there a competitive eating union? Can they get the collective bargaining agreement in their sport changed? One of the biggest dynasties in sports seems drastically underpaid!
Chestnut has the most titles at the Hot Dog Eating contest history, and has more titles than any other athlete in mainstream team sports history.
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