Girl Eating “Hot Dog” in Long Beach, California, ca. 1929

Ball games and hot dogs go together like cookies and milk, a truly American pairing with a rich and interesting history. Whether you call them hot dogs, red hots, wieners, franks or frankfurters, you obviously appreciate the genius of sausage served in a bun.

Although the history of sausage goes back a long way, there is no certain etymology of the name “hot dog.” The history dates back to more than a century ago when a cartoonist named T.A. Dorgan (short form TAD) drew a famous cartoon, and the rest is history.

So, the legend goes like this: At a baseball game at Polo Grounds in New York, United States, in 1901, TAD could hear loud yelling in his press box from vendors at food stalls saying, “Get your dachshund sausages while they are red hot!”

The next day, TAD drew a cartoon depicting the scene at the Polo Grounds with vendors yelling the same. However, he could not spell the word “dachshund”. So instead of writing what they were saying, he just wrote “hot dogs” instead of dachshund sausages. Since that day, these sausage filled ecstasy food is known as a hot dog.

Here is how a dachshund sausage would look like if Tad had his way.