The major leaguers step up to the plate

“Everyone loves to eat,” says competitive eating champ Joey “The Jaws” Chestnut. “Everyone imagines what it would feel like to eat 50 hot dogs. We’re just doing what everyone imagines doing.”

Speak for yourself, Jaws.

But the guy has a point. Once a freakish sideshow, competitive eating is now a fast growing sport -- and it’s probably no coincidence that its popularity goes hand in hand with the expansion of our collective waistline. Still, despite the health and moral objections, not to mention the sheer grossness factor, there’s something undeniably mesmerizing about watching a human wolf down 11 pounds of cheesecake in nine minutes.

In 1997, brothers Richard and George Shea, who have a background in PR, established the International Federation of Competitive Eating, a league that registered competitors, maintained statistics and sponsored officially sanctioned eating contests. They started out with less than 10 sanctioned events per year, all of which were hot dog eating contests.

“We worked hard to position [competitive eating] as a sport. We also created a presentation that is hyperbolic, dramatic and comedic. It’s sports commentary meets hucksterism, except it’s all real. And that makes it enjoyable for the audience,” says Shea, a relentless cheerleader for the sport.

These days, the IFOCE has morphed into Major League Eating and sponsors approximately 80 eating contests per year that include ribs, hamburgers, wings, waffles, cannoli and blueberry pies. Out of those contests have emerged superstars like Japanese phenomenon Takeru Kobayashi (5 feet 8, 165 pounds) and diminutive American eater Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas (5 feet 5, 100 pounds), who just won a wing-eating contest at the National Buffalo Wing Festival in, where else, Buffalo, N.Y.: 173 wings in 12 minutes.

This year, for the first time, Kobayashi was defeated at the pinnacle of the competitive eating circuit, Nathan’s International Hot Dog Eating Contest, held every July 4 on Coney Island, N.Y. The honor went to Chestnut, who downed 66 dogs in 12 minutes. “There are a lot of people who can eat a lot of food,” says Chestnut, “but not a lot of people who can do it in 12 minutes.” Which we consider to be a good thing.

-- Elina Shatkin