Photo of insects in a bowl next to cut limes via Centerplate
The Seattle Mariners began selling toasted grasshoppers at Safeco Field this season as a sort of novelty item. They come in a plastic cup and sell for $4, and people have been buying them by the thousands. According to spokeswoman Rebecca Hale, over the first three games of the season, they have sold nearly 18,000 grasshoppers. That's a lot of insects working their way through the collective digestive tract of the Pacific Northwest. Roughly 17,995 more than is reasonable, in my humble opinion. If they keep selling them at this pace, they will have sold approximately 486,000 grasshoppers. Nearly a half-million grasshoppers, purchased for consumption while watching Robinson Cano glide effortlessly around a baseball diamond.But baseball is a long season, full of peaks and valleys, and this hot start can't last forever. In fact, the Mariners aren't even waiting for the law of large numbers to work its magic—they are artificially limiting sales, so they can spread the supply of grasshoppers out.Starting with Friday night's game, the Mariners will limit sales to 312 orders per game in honor of the team's longtime great Edgar Martinez's career batting average (.312), Hale said.What better way to honor a franchise legend and current hitting coach than by capping the number of toasted insects sold in his presence? The answer is, there is no better way.Just when you think 2017 can't get any stranger, a baseball team starts rationing out the number of edible grasshoppers it sells because people are buying too many.[ESPN]
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