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Peanut's rich history linked to baseball

By Janet K. Keeler and Times Food, Travel Editor
Posted: Mar 31, 2008 03:46 PM

	[iStockphoto.com]

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Mom taught me to eat with my mouth shut and use a napkin. Really she did, but her good intentions go bad when I eat roasted peanuts. Especially at baseball games.

Dusty shells litter my shirt and pants and turn my shoes into a polka-dot mess. Woody shrapnel dots the hair of the unlucky folks in front of me. Sorry to the lady with the nice hairdo.

In a perfect peanut noshing world, one half of the shell remains intact, cradling two salty treats. Or three if the stars are aligned just right. I'm bitter when haywire plant genetics produce a singleton. Still, I throw back my head and toss whatever in. The leftovers? Kicked to the stadium floor, laying a crunchy rug that's ground fine during the seventh-inning stretch.

My lips feel funky and crackly after half a bag. That's when the beer — okay, Diet Coke — comes in, washing down salt and making me slink back happy in my too-tight plastic seat.

In honor of the opening of baseball, I honor the humble peanut. Only the circus has a closer association with the peanut, but the three rings don't come to my town 81 times a year. That's how many Rays games you can see at the Trop this season.

Here are 10 nutty facts to mull when the game is out of reach.

Janet K. Keeler, Times Food and Travel Editor

1. 2008 is the 100th anniversary of the baseball anthem, Take Me Out to the Ball Game. I figure it's warbled mid game at least 2,430 times a season at Major League Baseball parks. Jack Norworth wrote the lyrics while riding the New York subway. The line "Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack" cemented the peanut's place in baseball history. Pretty good PR for Cracker Jack, too.

2. The Tampa Bay Rays sold about 72,000 bags of peanuts last season. That included boiled peanuts, which are found mostly in stadiums in the South. (Out West they fancy garlic fries and shrimp tacos.) Boiled peanuts leave behind their own wet mess, though many people have the decency to put the slimy shells in a cup.

3. About 3-million Americans are allergic to peanuts. To help them out last season, the Minnesota Twins made the Skybox seats peanut-free for four games.

4. Peanuts have cute nicknames, among them goobers, goober peas, ground nuts and earth nuts.

5. In 1870, Phineas T. Barnum of the Barnum & Bailey Circus began selling roasted peanuts at performances. People ate 'em up. Just don't call them circus peanuts. Those are those spongy orange candies shaped liked peanuts. A gross imitation.

6. The term "peanut gallery" describes cheap balcony seats at the theater where patrons were so far away from the action that they felt comfortable snacking on peanuts throughout the performance. Today, we use that term to describe the chatter of detractors.

7. Was the Baby Ruth candy bar named after Yankee titan Babe Ruth or the daughter of President Grover Cleveland? The most likely story is that Babe Ruth was the inspiration for the name but the Curtiss Candy Co. never inked a legitimate deal with him. Ruth demanded royalties when the candy took off at the same time as his career. The courts rejected his claim.

8. Pop quiz: What do Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter have in common?
Answer: Both presidents were peanut farmers.

9. Peanuts are not nuts
but legumes, members
of the pea family. They grow underground on vines,
not on trees.

10. We eat peanuts while we watch America's pastime but they aren't red, white and blue at all. They originated in South America; today, India and China produce three-quarters of the world crop.

Sources: Tampa Bay Rays, Minnesota Twins, www.foodreference.com, Northern Michigan University.