Pizza-munching contest adds spice to spring festivities

By Stephen Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

Most Earth residents would argue that eating pizza is not a sport.

But four usually sane men, who are risking their reputations and digestive tracts at today's Warrior Spring Football Challenge at Cooke Field, would disagree.

"It has to be a sport, because of all of the years I've trained for it," said KITV sportscaster Robert Kekaula, the heavy favorite in the contest, which is part of the festivities surrounding the final workout of the University of Hawai'i football team's spring practice. "I'm finally hoping it pays off."

The marriage of food, drink and sports has been around since before Fred and Barney bowled for brontosaurus burgers. Sports is part of our literary daily bread, both symbolically and metaphorically.

We buy peanuts and Cracker Jacks while we root-root-root for the home team. Tickets sell like hot cakes. A shutout is a doughnut. Home is the plate.

We chase the carrot in hopes of winning the Big Enchilada. We celebrate by dousing our coaches with Gatorade and spraying our teammates with champagne.

A hittable pitcher is meat; an unhittable hitter is toast.

Is there a better bridge phrase than food fight?

In circle logic, food is life and, nearly every coach insists in a pre-game speech, sports is a microcosm of life. So, sure, a pizza-eating contest is a sport.

"Especially since it's for charity," Kekaula said. "I was supposed to give up pizza for Lent."

Advertiser sportswriter Ferd Borsch, the Babe Ruth of local bingers, agreed that sports and food go hand in mouth, giving his blessing to this contest.

Borsch, who usually leaves his plate as clean as his pate, once drank 26 cups of coffee in a day. Another night, he had 26 martinis. At spring baseball training in Lake Wales, Fla., several years ago, he downed 100 Florida oysters, most drenched in garlic butter sauce. He chased the oysters with a double filet mignon, prepared by Sid Hudson, a former Washington Senator pitcher.

There is no truth that he bleeds butter. "It might be scotch," said Borsch, 71, who has been reporting for 54 years.

"It's a matter of genes," Borsch said. "You can eat saw dust, but if genes say you die at 40, you die at 40. Only it will seem longer because you're missing the taste of life."

It is why Borsch, who retired from competitive eating and will watch from the sideline, would prefer that the pizza contest be an endurance race. To the winner, who can eat a pizza pie the fastest, goes 18 pizza pies.

"I'd rather they take their time and squeeze every taste out of it," Borsch said. "But pizza is pizza. You can't go wrong with pizza."