The Fenway Frank and Dodger Dog need to make some room because there is a new champion coming this season.

The "Champion Dog" at Rangers Ballpark measures nearly two feet long and weighs a pound, before any toppings are added. The all-beef frank includes a mountain of shredded cheese, chili and sautéed onions. The meal comes with a pile of fries and is designed for four people. At $26, it has a price tag to match too.

Shawn Mattox, Sportservice general manager, which handles concessions for the park, was looking for an item that had the "wow" factor.

"We just thought a one-pound hot dog would be a fun thing to do, more so for the look," he said. "Hopefully people will enjoy it. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the hot dogs!"

This isn't the first over-sized food ploy by the Rangers to try to get fans attention. Last year they offered a three-pound pretzel. This year, they're setting their sights on the one item synonymous with watching a baseball game. Hot dogs are the No. 1 seller at MLB stadiums and more than 25 million are consumed at games each year.

The question is whether fans will pay roughly four times the cost of an average frank for this behemoth. To help seal the deal, the Champion Dog will be served on a 2-foot-long cutting board when ordered at the Captain Morgan sports bar. Wheatley and company are hoping that the presentation will help draw in more customers. The hot dog will also be served at a regular concession stand in the park.

Jim Gaffigan is going to have a field day with this.

More than a decade ago, the comedian poked fun at the idea of Americans paying for bottled water. "I know you can get water free from any faucet," he said, "but I want to pay for it."

Now a company called Brooklyn Water Enterprises has signed a deal to sell bottled water and bagels at the Barclays Center, which will open in September and soon be home to the New Jersey Nets.

The kicker is that the water is made more than a thousand miles away in Florida. It's incredible fuel for critics of the arena, especially since developer (and Nets minority owner) Bruce Ratner has called for the food and concessions to be "quintessentially Brooklyn." It's hard to imagine that includes water put through a 14-step process in another state.

By SportsAndFood.com
via TheDailyMeal.com

Most golfers don't get to golf as much as they would like, and neither does Mario Batali. With 16 restaurants and a weekday food talk show ("The Chew," airing on ABC Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. ET), the chef is lucky to work in a round of golf every couple weeks or so, which is actually an improvement.

"I used to play maybe three or four times a year, but now it's maybe 20 or 30 times a year," he told SportsAndFood.com. "[My schedule is] tighter than I'd like it, but you can always squeeze in a little time for golf, especially if you go really early in the morning."

He finds golf provides him with a chance to be outside in a wide-open space, quite a ways away from the nearest group of people. If that doesn't sound like something terribly exciting, you have probably never worked in the restaurant business, a field where people will volunteer to take out the garbage just for 90 seconds of fresh air and peace.

Batali has been golfing since his college days (his two favorite courses are Manitou Passage near Traverse City, Mich., and New Jersey's Bayonne Golf Club) and has a tremendous respect for the game. "It's much easier to cook something than it is to get a really good golf swing," he said. To that end, the chef recently started stepping up his game. He is one of four celebrities appearing this season on The Golf Channel's "The Haney Project" (airing Monday nights at 9 p.m. ET), where he gets to work with Hank Haney, Tiger Woods' former swing coach.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Takeru Kobayashi is sitting down to a chili dog at a restaurant called Frank.

It's a house of indulgence and excess and all meats in tube form -- the kind of place that puts macaroni and cheese on a dog because "why the hell not?" Here the six-time world champion hot dog eater sits tucked in a corner at a table behind the hostess booth, in a setting that could not be more appropriate, for a meal built around the food that's made him famous.

Then comes the surprise.

"This is the first hot dog I've ever eaten for a meal," the 34-year-old Kobayashi says.

He then eats an entirely reasonable amount of food, and enjoys his time with new friends around the dinner table.

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. If you expected a sideshow of monumental proportions with your evening meal, well, you're not getting it tonight.

It's an unseasonably cold, rainy, and miserable Friday night on the opening weekend of the city's annual South-By-Southwest festival. Kobayashi is sporting a jacket that most closely resembles the driver jacket that Ryan Gosling wears in "Drive," black skinny jeans, and brilliant bright red Chuck Taylor-style high tops.

He takes at least a dozen photographs of the establishment both before, during, and after dinner. He didn't pick the restaurant, but he's happy with the choice. Sure, he doesn't eat hot dogs for dinner, but he cheerfully downs this one. And he probably spends more time posing for fan photos with his food than he actually does eating the stuff.

For the curious and uninitiated, the first myth of Kobayashi is dashed upon the discovery that generally speaking, he eats most meals like a normal human being. The king of all excess and gluttony spends most of his time politely and graciously consuming the attention that comes with the crown.

But make no mistake -- he came to Austin to set a world record, and spread the legend.

After the chili dog, he snacks on poutine, waffle fries with bacon and cheese and a Frito pie. Dessert at the Driskill Hotel is banana pudding with a few bites of chocolate chip cookie and brownie.

It's sort of ridiculous. Kobayashi has become household name all over the world, and especially in America. He has done this by eating absurd amounts of food at absurd clips. The numbers are crazy: 69 hot dogs in 10 minutes, six Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest titles, 87 tacos in 10 minutes, 57 cows brains in 15 minutes (this was his least favorite of all the challenges), and so on. He has been banned from Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, the Independence Day event he helped make as popular as it is today, because he refuses to sign himself over to Major League Eating. This came to a head at the 2010 event, when he showed up after refusing to sign and then crashed the stage afterward. He was arrested, spent a night in jail, and a Brooklyn judge dismissed the charges shortly thereafter. His career is full of achievement, popularity and drama. He has traveled the world (10 countries and 20 states), and created improbable questions about whether eating competitively is a sport and requires athletes.