McDonalds, the most popular and reasonably priced concessionaire in Bank Two Ballpark history, has been replaced by Gordon Biersch and Fatburger – pretentious niche vendors offering more expensive fare.

Team President Derrick Hall:

"It should be great and will give us some new options."

New options. Yes. Like paying more for a hamburger or imagining what a value priced McFlurry used to taste like on a hot summer evening, instead of actually enjoying one.

We understand Gordon Biersch sells microbrews, supplying casual imbibers and MLB’s rich core of alcoholics with desperately needed product differentiation. But why jettison McDonalds, instead of one of the countless, redundant brew stands currently impeding concourse foot traffic? Do we really need more total beer to quench this half empty stadium’s thirst – at the expense of, like, ya know, food?

I’ve been to Fatburger. Menu items are called fat something. Fat fries. Fat meal. Fat burger. Get it? Whether or not the caloric chow is any more engaging than this one dimensional marketing gimmick, everyone agrees Fatburger is considerably more expensive than McDonalds.

To summarize, the famously family friendly Diamondbacks have increased the supply of beer and overpriced hamburgers at the ballpark, while abandoning what a decade’s worth of loyal fans consider the ballpark’s best value food option. This, as surveys record rising dissatisfaction with concession prices, and with Arizona licking it’s wounds after a nationally televised bottle throwing incident.

(Photo courtesy of terragalleria.com and worth1000.com)

Some Dads want a hug from their son on Father’s Day, but not me. We save our hugs for times of distress, when we haven’t seen each other in a while, or when the Diamondbacks win the World Series.

Some Dads want a kiss from their son on Father’s Day, but not me. I like boy on boy smooching to be unscheduled, spontaneous and fairly uncommon – not part of some unwritten holiday ritual.

Some Dads want a hand made card or a thoughtful present – dont need any of that.

What I want, and have received five years running, on Father’s Day is fooood!

Wooo hoooo!

Every year, my wife and son wake up early on Father’s Day to prepare my favorite breakfast in the world. They purchase fresh bagels from the bakery and lightly toast them. My son dutifuly washes his hands(or so he says) before preparing a sort of kosher antipasto platter of fine Nova lox encircled by thick slabs of tomato and thinly sliced cucumber and red onion. My wife’s platter features the moistest scrambled eggs ringed with rosemary sprigs and, if I’ve been good that year, ripe avocado sections.

The annual assemblage begins with one toasted bagel half, face up, schmeered with cream cheese acting as a glue for the layers of delicate smoked salmon. The cucumber and tomato is next, topped with the exquisite, warm eggs. I like to sprinkle in a few briny capers, nestled in the eggs, to add a hint of saltiness, and avocado sections are inserted into the remaining gaps, if any.

The sandwich wouldn’t fit in my mouth if topped with the other bagel half, so it is roofed instead with a thin but firm slice of red onion, and I clench it thusly. 

For 364 days a year, your Diamondhacks scribe is a nondenominational ascetic, religiously monitoring his weight for the usual health reasons, but on Father’s Day, I am one fat, happy ***…or at least I eat like one. I groan "Oy vey" and inappropriate Hebrew idioms after every sublime bite, amidst my boy’s confused goyishe laughter, as he digs into sausage and bacon and my wife sips her Scottsdale coffee and picks at fruit salad. I treasure these moments, where we each enjoy our own thing, but are very much connected.

Then, I clean up the dishes and the rest of the day is just like any other day, or at least any other Sunday. We might swim or play Scrabble, or read the paper, or finally get around to cleaning up all that dog doo in the backyard. Being a Dad is an enormous blessing with everyday rewards so I’d rather not make June 18th an all day extravaganza, with presents and dinners and hugs and kisses and stuff. 

The breakfast is wonderful…and then we move on. For the past five years, that’s been my perfect Father’s Day. 

Well, almost perfect. If my own father was still alive, there’d be some hugs and maybe a kiss at at the table.  Because…ya know…we haven’t seen each other in a while.

The $8.75 Big Dawg was deemed Chase Field’s "Worst Culinary Ripoff" in a recently completed poll of Diamondhacks readers, besting (or wursting) three other exorbitant food selections.

The meaty pink logs slathered in an excessive assortment of wretched goo, snatched nearly half of all votes polled, easily outdistancing Blimpie’s puny $5 "sub-lette" and the park’s newest offering, beer poured into an incredibly small cup, retailing at $4 per thimble-sized serving.

Diamondhacks sincerely thanks all who doggedly participated. Weiner coulda done it widout ya!

Few posts delight us more than a regional restaurant shout out or menu provided by an MLBlogger out on the baseball road. So it was with genuine anticipation that we clicked on the potential mother lode – a 16 city lineup of culinary favorites selected by garrulous gourmand, Tommy Lasorda.

Diamondhacks has dined in 9 of the 35 establishments praised by the Dodger legend and was, therefore, underwhelmed, even dismayed, by some of his entries.

Family style chain, Buca di Beppo was Mr Lasorda’s only LA based Italian restaurant of note. Paisano! You’ve got to be kidding! Maybe it’s a step up from Olive Garden, but your favorite Italian…in all of Los Angeles?

Baseball’s beloved BLUEbird lays his biggest egg in our home state, Arizona. Phoenix/Scottsdale now boasts scores and scores of interesting, memorable restaurants. According to The New York Times, the nation’s best pizza joint may be Phoenix’s reasonably priced Pizzeria Bianco. There are prime steakhouses galore, first class Mexican(Carolina’s, La Hacienda), world class southwestern(Vincent’s), outstanding moderately priced chains(Houston’s) – and that’s just the tip of the saguaro!

For an esteemed epicure like Tommy Lasorda to say his favorite Arizona (and Milwaukee) restaurant is the depressingly ordinary Lone Star Steakhouse chain is like Thomas Keller gushing over Applebees.

In the best interests of baseball and to restore the credibility of one of it’s biggest icons, Diamondhacks recommends the following actions:

• MLBlogs should gently request that Mr Lasorda review and edit his post to reflect, well, taste.

• If Mr Lasorda fails to amend the post voluntarily, an imposing authority with murky, far reaching powers, like Mark Newman, shall politely threaten to remove the post from the blogosphere.

• If Mr Lasorda still fails to act, the offending post shall be skewered and grilled until golden brown – and it’s juices run clear.

• Mr Lasorda’s "Respected Foodie" card shall be revoked immediately and a replacement card will not be issued – not even within 7 to 10 business days.

Note that our recommendations do not in any way jeopardize billfolds of frequent feeder punch cards or the mountain of unredeemed Chuck E Cheese tokens that may be on Mr Lasorda’s person. We believe such cards should remain in force and all tokens be fully vested.

Diamondhacks is, after all, not capricious…mean, maybe, but not capricious.