You’ve Heard of Hal the Hot Dog Guy. Now, Meet Mike the Hot Dog Mayor

Hal the Hot Dog Guy helped define the modern baseball experience in Oakland. His successor is hoping to do the same with the Oakland Ballers.

June 25, 2024

This article was originally published by Lena Park for the SF Eater. To read the full article, please visit https://sf.eater.com/2024/6/24/24184418/hal-hot-dog-guy-oakland-ballers-baseball-mike-hot-dog-mayor

If you've ever looked for Hal Gordon at the Oakland Coliseum, you probably heard him before you saw him. A small, but undeniable, "Let's Go, Oakland!" would crescendo in a corner of the stadium. In the middle of a sea of green and gold, there he'd be: Hal the Hot Dog Guy, dressed in his classic red-and-white pinstripe vest, rhythmically banging his tongs against the 53-pound hot dog-filled steamer he carried — a makeshift beat in between chants.

Then in 2022, Gordon hung up his vest after six seasons with the Oakland Athletics. A year later, the ownership announced they would relocate the town's last remaining professional sports team to Las Vegas, outraging fans, disappointing city officials, and frustrating stadium vendors alike.

So when the Pioneer Baseball League stated that the Oakland Ballers would make West Oakland their home in 2024, baseball fans rallied behind the new team. Fan excitement grew when they heard Gordon would return from his vending hiatus to work the team's inaugural home stand against the Yolo High Wheelers. "[The A's ownership] isn't moving a team as much as they're abolishing a community and fan group," Gordon says. "I really want the Ballers to succeed because I want Oakland baseball to succeed. I've made a lot of friends who are Oakland baseball fans, and they deserve to have a community."

Fans seek out Gordon just for his hot dogs. Nowhere else in these stadiums can you find the extra fixings he carries — especially at A's games: sweet and dill relishes, specialty mustards, sriracha, jalapeños, sauerkraut, and capers. When the Chicago White Sox came to town, he'd sometimes have tomatoes to make Chicago dogs, too.

But it's the other "extras" he brought to the gig that made him, as he calls it, "a kind of mascot for the team" — one created by a simple fan-first philosophy that seemed otherwise absent from the Coliseum in recent years. First-timers would squeal when he shot red string out of his trick ketchup bottle at them. Kids grinned after getting an official "Hal the Hot Dog Guy" baseball card.

The joy of seeing Hal during the first week of the Ballers' June 4 home opener wasn't just about hot dogs. For long-time A's fans like Nate, who has been coming to A's games since the 1970s, it was about celebrating with a true fan, an entertainer, a vocal activist — an indelible part of the modern Oakland baseball scene. "He's part of the baseball nostalgia," Nate says. "He became the hot dog guy there. It's something we always looked forward to, and he's a huge part of the loss of the A's ... he's my guy."

Gordon recognizes that maybe fan groups like the Oakland 68s and the Last Dive Bar guys wouldn't exist if the A's were a juggernaut team with a brand-new stadium, but he appreciates that Oakland's fans feel like a community. "I've vended for a bunch of different teams and in a bunch of different cities, and I've never been around a team that had a real fan group [like the A's]," Gordon says.

Gordon's return to hot dog vending in the Bay with the Ballers was only for a week. He recently moved to Washington, D.C. to be closer to family while he starts one of his own. But as someone who always looks out for Oakland baseball fans, this Hot Dog Guy made sure to find someone who could help carry on the tradition — and found him in Mike Davie. "Nothing would make me happier," Gordon says, "than somebody picking up the hot dog vendor mantle, running with it for the next season, and changing it however they think they should do it."

On paper, Davie is the perfect candidate. Known to his friends as "Mike the Mayor" for his outgoing nature, Davie is also an A's fan born and raised in Oakland. He's worked at Top Dog and he's seen Gordon in action during his many outings to the Coliseum, eventually becoming friends. In person, he's an even more ideal fit, mirroring the same down-to-earth enthusiasm and passion for cultivating memorable fan experiences that Gordon has — and Davie is excited to experiment to see what will resonate at home games. "I want to create my own spin on it," Davie says. "I'm going to keep some Hal classics, but I'm also going to figure out my own jokes and chants."