Giant Temptations

My friend Mike has a sixth sense when it comes to finding bargains. A few years ago, he heard that a long-time San Francisco Giants baseball team season ticket holder was looking to sell her rights to two prime seats at the Club Level above home plate.

Mike makes a good living, but not that good. The price of copping those season ducats would have been out of his league. So he quickly recruited several other Giants fans and persuaded them to help him buy the season tickets on a time-share basis.

This means that every few weeks or so during baseball season I get a call from him to head on over to AT&T Park and catch a game. The park is one of the best in the majors. It’s a brick-faced beauty, a small, intimate place (42,500 capacity) with great sight lines to the San Francisco Bay. When you’re not watching the action on the field, there’s an entertaining view of distant hills and cargo ships anchored out in the bay awaiting their turn at a berth in port.

Idyllic, no? But there’s a fly in the ointment: garlic fries. One of the park’s concessionaires has destroyed more waistlines and generated more cravings than all the bratwurst vendors on earth combined. His freshly cut and cooked fries are heaped with shards of sautéed garlic, and the aroma draws customers like dogs to an overturned meat truck.

I am not immune to the smell of garlic fries. Nor am I immune to the incredible carbo hit those bad boys bring. My dilemma every time I’m at the park is how to avoid eating them.

Then my dilemma shifts to how I can I rationalize eating them.

Finally, after eating some of them, my dilemma ends at how I will work them off.

I discussed this with my wife yesterday before leaving for the park. She said, “Take a holiday. You’re conscientious about exercising and avoiding carbs, and your improving numbers show it. Believe me, indulging in a tub of garlic fries twice a year isn’t going to be what kills you.”

You can’t deny wisdom when it pours forth upon you, especially coming from someone who often wins control of the remote. Pre-pardoned by my understanding wife, I went the game prepared to buy garlic fries with no pangs of remorse.

But wouldn’t you know it, human nature took over. Now that I had been given permission to buy those fries, the force of their appeal melted away. Even though I knew the entire universe would be fine with my naughtiness, when it came time to make my purchase, I went for the “Roadhouse Chili” instead. It wasn’t bad and there was nothing in it to choke on except maybe its inflated ballpark price.

So the closest I got to those garlic fries was smelling their aroma wafting throughout the park all afternoon. In a funny sort of way, I was in the best of all worlds for a type 2: I coulda woulda, guilt-free, but chose not to.