SNACK ATTACK

It's unavoidable. If you go to a game, the BALLPARK GRUB being served is going to be as much a part of the experience as the contest itself

- BY STEVE RUSHIN

BEHOLD THE batting helmet sundae, striated coil of vanilla soft serve extruded into a plastic hat and stabbed, at point of purchase, with a spoon that stands on its own, like the ceremonial first shovel at some grand civic groundbreaking. It's a Wednesday afternoon at Citi Field and cupped in your trembling hand is a miniature Mets batting helmet. Pasteurized, homogenized, romanticized, the helmet sundae is the sun-kissed marriage of Mr. Softee and Mrs. Met, food and baseball, a divine partnership. And what God has joined together, let no man tear asunder.

This is a love story about stadium food. Last spring, television cameras caught a couple at Wrigley Field Lady and the Tramp-ing a hot dog, attacking it simultaneously from either end until they eventually met in the middle for a kiss.

At the same park, in 2012, the center-field message board flashed a fifth-inning proposal: ERICA, WILL YOU MARRY ME? Alas, Erica's seat was empty. Only when she returned from her beer run, a cold one in either hand, was the message reposted while her suitor, Greg, took a knee, their relationship consecrated in two-fisted splendor.

America's greatest living poet attended a Red Sox game with his daughter's fiancé in 1928, and seemed to regret the road not taken. Robert Frost left Fenway feeling slightly emasculated after being outeaten by his future son-in-law, James Dwight Francis. “I had a fine time at the ballgame with Dwight,” Frost wrote to his daughter Lesley after watching the Sox and Senators split a doubleheader that August. “I didn't quite hold my own on the peanuts and hot dogs. Another time, I'll go prepared to eat everything.”

Ninety-seven years later, those last five words remain good advice. Ballpark food is equal parts gluttony and poetry.

Dippin' Dots, tater tots,

Chicken wings, onion rings.