aethelbur01: FOUL BALLS: Ranking The Worst Food Safety Violations At Major League Baseball Stadiums

Monday, 5 September 2011

FOUL BALLS: Ranking The Worst Food Safety Violations At Major League Baseball Stadiums

ballpark hot dog baseball

Stadium concessions are a huge part of the business of sports as franchises clean up on the high profit margins and lack of competition.

$7.50 for one hot dog? What choice do you have? (Pretty tasty, though.)

For those kinds of prices, fans would expect the highest quality from their food preparers, but things are not always what they seem. It's a tall order to feed 52,000 people in a single night and keep the the kitchen spic and span. Most MLB ballparks can't (totally) pull it off.

So we looked up the public food inspection records for every Major League Baseball stadium to see who's the best — and worst — at keeping your food clean.

A few notes on methodology:

The violations are labeled as either critical or minor violations from the 2010 season. There is some difficulty comparing different ballparks, as each city, county, or state system for restaurant inspections, and the same violation can mean different things in different places.

For example, having an employee drink cup without a lid in a food preparation area was critical violation in Philadelphia, but a minor violation in St. Petersburg. In some cases, municipalities don't list certain kinds of violations. Los Angeles and Anaheim list their minor violations individually, but Los Angeles only lists the general issue whereas, Anaheim gets into more explicit detail.

Both Chicago ballparks were not included on this list, since Chicago does their park fare inspections only when there is a complaint. Minnesota's Target Field, Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and Detroit's Comerica Park also aren't included, since there was not enough information available about those three parks.