9-9-9

A few months ago, I was reading the blog of class of 1987's Gregg Novachek. He wrote about an experience he had called "The 9-9-9." What is this, you may ask? Well, it's a challenge of sorts - a challenge that is supposed to take place during a baseball game.

The challenge is this. In the course of the nine-inning game, the participant is to eat nine hot dogs (and buns) and drink nine 16-ounce beers. Gregg accomplished this feat.

I was impressed. And I wanted to try it. There's no rule that says it can't take place in your own home. So that's what I would try. Also, since I detest beer, I would substitute wine coolers. I couldn't try this feat on my own. So I enlisted Meff to join me.

Meff was reluctant about the whole thing. But in the end, he did participate. But instead of hot dogs, he substituted not one, but two Tombstone pizzas.

We chose game one of the 2006 World Series. The date was Saturday, October 21st, 2006. Exactly three weeks earlier, I'd celebrated my birthday party. On that night, I drank perhaps 14 wine coolers with relative ease. I was thoroughly smashed (after three of them). But I didn't get sick. Success! With that dry run behind me, I thought I was well prepared to beat the 9-9-9.

I was wrong. I'm sad to say I could only drink four wine coolers. Four! What the hell? On a positive note, I did manage to get all nine hot dogs in me. The last bite of number nine went down with two outs in the 9th inning.

So what happened? I have a theory. My stomach simply wasn't big enough to handle it all. Sure, I'd downed 14 wine coolers a few weeks earlier. So why only four this night? No room. It's as simple as that. Those nasty hot dogs and buns swelled in my stomach, literally leaving no room for anything else - even liquids. On the night of my birthday, all I ate was one piece of pizza and a cookie. So there was plenty of room for liquids.

So how did Meff do? He did even worse. He too only managed to finish four beers. And while he did manage to finish one whole pizza, not one bite was sunk into number two.

So we both failed. And both of us were drunk after three drinks. How pathetic is that? I guess because neither one of us drink, it took very little to get a full buzz going. As an interesting side note, in the 20+ years Meff and I have been friends, this was the first time that we had ever gotten drunk together.

Anyway, my lovely wife got out the camcorder and filmed a little bit. These clips aren't riotously entertaining. But some might get a kick out of them. So here they are, in all their glory. Clip #1 features my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter as well.