At 3:31 p.m. Thursday, the most unimaginable American weather phenomenon hit T-Mobile Park. About 100 hot dogs glided gracefully toward Earth, each attached to a parachute and headed toward the hungry horde. From the upper deck, 12 Mariners employees — and a sportswriter — leaned over the railings and freed the overheated dogs.
Meanwhile, 32,347 frenzied fans pounced on the warm meats, while Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” accompanied the nonsense.
It’s the Mariners’ viral marketing monsoon, a stroke of joyous genius worthy of the Fourth of July. It’s a mid-inning moment of levity in the midst of a summer blues.
It’s “Hot Dogs from Heaven.”
“It’s just joy. It’s pure bliss for 90 seconds,” Tyler Thompson, the Mariners’ senior director of experiential marketing and entertainment, said of the show. “What’s better, especially in a ballpark, than hot dogs falling from the sky?”
(Frustrated fans might ask for a few more well-timed shots, but alas, we digress.)
The idea came about last fall, when Hempler’s Foods, the Mariners’ frankfurter supplier based in Ferndale, asked for an in-game promotion that would grab attention. A team that included Thompson, vice president of fan experience Malcolm Rogel and in-game entertainment coordinator Nick Sybouts came up with the flying pigs.
(Or cows. Or dogs. You get the idea.)
According to Thompson, the name came first. But while frankfurters have long been fired from bazookas and cannons at baseball games, it took more advanced physics (and early failures) to make them float.
“By November, we were buying parachutes on Amazon and attaching them to hot dogs and dropping them into an empty stadium,” said Thompson, who also tested the parachutes with water bottles. “We learned a lot about weight distribution and parachute size and how those two things work together. The first two we dropped were like 300-level heat-seeking missiles. We were like, ‘OK, this isn’t going to work.’”
The tests continued. The early parachute materials were too thin to allow the frankfurters to float rather than fall. According to Thompson, “They didn’t catch the air, so the wind blew through them. So the hot dogs might as well have been tied to a paper napkin.”
Eventually, the team turned to a calculator from a model rocket website, which recommended a 36-inch parachute for hot dog deliveries. Thompson and Co. custom-ordered the parachutes, which are made from a mesh material and attached to the paper wrappers with a carabiner. (Ketchup and mustard packets are also included.)
Other considerations, Thompson said, included “how the hot dog attaches to the strap, making sure that when it’s thrown, the hot dog doesn’t fly out of the parachute; how to wrap the parachute; what angle to throw the parachute at so that it opens and slides down nicely.”
“We also have to consider the wind at the stadium on nights when we throw hot dogs. If it’s too windy, they can go up and right down to the suites. So there’s actually a certain amount of logistics and an assembly line to get it all set up.”
Speaking of which: The Mariners have set up a sign-up sheet at the front desk to help wrap and distribute the hot dogs. The team’s concession partner, Sodexo, cooks and delivers the hot dogs between the fifth and sixth innings, which leaves an inning or two to wrap, box, tie parachutes and move the hot dogs into individual hot bags…so the hot dogs stay hot.
Usually in the seventh or eighth inning the sausages are flying.
“We really want to throw them up and out,” said Thompson, whose team posted a 7-3 win over the Orioles on Thursday. “If you throw them straight out, they don’t have as much time to fall back. If you throw them too high, they end up coming back at you, depending on the direction of the wind. So, up and out.”
The technique has been refined over time. Dipping hot dogs made their debut on April 13, in the late innings of a 4-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs. In front of a confused (and then captivated) crowd of 38,104 inside T-Mobile Park, 50 hot dogs made their first flight.
Or fall.
“We had a few little incidents,” Thompson said. “Hot dogs would come off their parachutes, or they weren’t wrapped properly and the parachute wouldn’t deploy. There was definitely a little nerves the first time. But now it’s become a lot of fun.”
For employees. For fans. For hot dog lovers.
For associated pop stars.
“The song (Heaven is a Place on Earth) is perfect for right now because it’s about joy,” Thompson said. “We worked on a few different songs, and then when we played it in one of our rehearsals, we were like, ‘OK, this is definitely it.’ Belinda Carlisle noticed. She saw the song. She’s a big fan of it. We hope to work with her at some point in the future.”
Of course, Carlisle saw it. A May video of the delightful downpour has been viewed 447,000 times on Instagram and another 166,000 on “X.” In June, a woman posted a TikTok video of her partner smiling and grabbing the snack, captioned, “I’ve never seen my boyfriend so happy.” The video has been viewed 8.8 million times and received 359,000 likes.
Bestselling author, chef and Seattle resident J. Kenji Lopez-Alt — one of 694,000 Instagram followers — posted about how he nabbed a coveted hot dog while attending a game last week.
The Mariners plan to run the operation at least 20 times this season, releasing about 2,000 flying salmon. Other marketing efforts, including a mid-inning “Salmon Run” mascot race and a Microsoft computer rally package, have also seen viral success.
But for Thompson, the Mariners’ joy merchant, it’s all part of the job.
“There are times when I pinch myself all the time at work and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe this is my job,’” said Thompson, a Spokane native and lifelong Mariners fan. “I got my master’s degree (in sports administration) from Eastern Washington, and I’m digging a watermelon, or I’m tying hot dogs to parachutes, or I’m dreaming about these four salmon racing, or whatever. I can’t believe this is my job and I get to do it for my favorite baseball team since I was a kid.”
A hundred hot dogs fell from the sky on July 4.
In what world are we living ?