Nationality: American

Occupation: Corporate Event Planner

Residence: New York, NY

Language: English

Text:

In 1919, during Yankees spring training in Florida, a Yankees player boasted that he could eat more spaghetti than anyone else on the team. His teammates did not argue with him, because they had seen how much spaghetti he could eat. Eventually, his teammates got tired of him talking about how much he could eat, so they arranged for a spectacle of a competition they were sure he would lose; they would have him compete in an eating contest against an ostrich. Somehow they set up this eating contest between a ballplayer and an ostrich, and in the end the ballplayer won. He passed out after eating eleven plates of spaghetti, and the ostrich ran away after eating seven, making him the winner.

Context:

My aunt told me this story, and she first heard it from her great-uncle Pete Sheehy, who is famous for being the equipment manager and clubhouse attendant of the New York Yankees for 50 years. Sheehy had not yet joined the Yankees in 1919, so he would have heard this story from other players or employees that he worked with. When I asked her if she had any folk stories to share, she said that there were tons of stories involving the Yankees that were famous and well known, and she listed some like Babe Ruth calling his shot and Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech, but then she remembered and shared this story as a more niche Yankee moment.

Analysis:

There are tons of stories about the New York Yankees in the early 20th century that have become legends, but almost all of those stories are about how dominant the team was and how great all of the players were. This story is not about a great player, nor is it even about baseball. It is just a bizarre story. However, the detail that the food being eaten in the contest was spaghetti jumped out at me. The Yankees fan base has always had a large Italian American population, and at the time of this story Italian Americans were a marginalized group. The fact that a member of the “Murderer’s Row” Yankees, which is often still regarded as the best baseball team ever, was Italian and ate a lot of spaghetti would be incredibly significant to the Italian American fans who were underrepresented at that point in time. Given how my aunt repeated numerous times that the food was spaghetti, it was clearly an important part of the story.