Pizza in the Park

Yesterday, the Washington Nationals — now my surrogate team, since being a Pirates fan is just too damn painful — finished the 2012 season with the National League East division title.

The day before yesterday, I was at the Nationals-Phillies game. A friend took my sons and me to the game, so in return, I offered to buy dinner at Nationals Park. When I asked his sons what we should get, they answered just as you’d expect any 5- and 9-year-olds to answer: “Pizza!”

I was happy to oblige. I assumed I was getting off cheap.

I was wrong.

At the concession stand, I gasped when I saw that pizza slices were $6 each. Admittedly, they were big slices — an 18″ pizza was divided into 6 slices — but that’s still a lot of money for 42 square inches of pizza. If you think of it as just 14 cents per square inch, it doesn’t feel quite so bad. Until you realize that you could get an entire pie outside the stadium for the cost of 2 slices inside the stadium.

Whatever. The tickets were free, so I ordered a pie. But as I did, I asked the clerk, “Why are pies $36 if slices are $6 each? Shouldn’t there be a discount for buying an entire pizza?” He shrugged his shoulders and gave me the same look I usually get from checkout people when I ask similar questions. His eyes said, “Sorry, dude, I just work here.”

The man behind the counter who was cooking the pizzas must have heard me. When my pie came out of the oven, he used his cutter to divide the pie into 8 slices instead of just 6. I guess he thought I’d feel better if the slices only cost $4.50 each. Never mind that each slice was only 3/4 the size of a regular slice.

Since I felt like I was in the middle of a bad math joke, I figured I ought to deliver the punch line.

“What’d you do that for?” I asked. “I’m not very hungry! There’s no way I’ll be able to eat 8 slices!”

The upside? The Nationals won, 4-2, and they earned the top seed in the playoffs. Go, Nats!