By Adam Gardner | May 18, 2026
The Kansas City Royals snapped their six-game losing streak Sunday, beating the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0.
I was part of a group of people taking on the 9-9-9 Challenge on the same day. World-class athletes doing incredible feats of strength were everywhere.
Royals skid
The latest KC losing streak included being swept by the Chicago White Sox. I mentioned in my last post that I needed to figure out if I should take the White Sox seriously. I got my answer because the White Sox are a game out of first place and are over .500 while the Royals are tied with the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central cellar.
Anne Rogers said it best after the Royals were swept by the Sox: “One step forward and two steps back.”
It’s true that it’s still just May 18 and there is a lot of season left to play. But it’s also true the season is nearly 30% completed and the Royals have not been able to show any consistency.
They are 20-27, 5.5 games back of a Cleveland team that somehow competes for division titles every season. The American League has not been good this season, but the Royals have a winning percentage better than just three AL teams.
Next up
The good news is the Royals have a nine-game homestand starting tonight. KC has been much better at home than on the road: 13-10 vs 7-17.
More good news: the Royals play the Red Sox, who are half-a-game worse than KC so far this season, then they take on the Mariners, who they recently swept. The homestand ends with three games against the New York Yankees, one of the only good teams in the American League.
Frankly, if this isn’t a winning homestand, we can probably stick a fork in the 2026 Royals. With that potential reality staring us straight in the face, lets talk about eating a ridiculous number of hot dogs.
9-9-9 Challenge
I can’t tell you exactly when I became familiar with the 9-9-9 Challenge, but I can tell you I’ve been intrigued by it for as long as I’ve known about it.
If you’re unaware, the 9-9-9 dictates the competitor must consume 9 hot dogs and 9 beers within 9 innings of a baseball game. Easy to understand, difficult to accomplish.
I was talking to my friend Ryan in January when we realized the 9-9-9 was something we both wanted to take on, but the circumstances just hadn’t been right. We decided that night we would make the attempt when the Royals played at the St. Louis Cardinals.
We wanted a day game, so we chose Sunday, May 17. We didn’t think far enough ahead because it turns out this past weekend was heavy on graduations and graduation parties, so a few people who were interested in doing it with us were unable to attend.
We still had seven people taking on the challenge – Ryan, Cody, Emily, Hannah, Josie, Tim, and me.
We had three TVs all locked in on the Royals vs Cardinals, and Ryan had prepped two roasters with 92 hot dogs in aluminum sheets to keep the dogs ready to go.
Emily and I brought mustard, ketchup, relish, and even chips, queso and chili in case anyone who wasn’t competing still wanted to have a loaded dog.
The plan
My original plan was to not eat anything at all on Sunday morning, but then I figured it might be a good idea to eat something small just to get the digestive juices going.
Ryan went with coffee and nothing else. He said it was pretty tough not eating a hot dog while he wrapped them in aluminum, but it’s safe to assume now he’s OK with not eating a breakfast dog.
The drink of choice for Cody and I was Quirk made by Boulevard – a seltzer. I wanted to go the traditional route with a beer, but inflammation has become a problem for me when I drink beer and I wanted to avoid that as much as possible. Ryan went with Coors Banquet, and the rest had a mixture of cocktails.
An important rule going into the 9-9-9 is deciding if you can “work ahead” and take down hot dogs and drinks as quickly as possible, but Ryan and I made the executive decision that you must consume 1 dog and 1 drink per inning.
I decided my best course of action would be to eat the hot dog as fast as possible at the start of every inning and then work on my Quirk. I also wanted to switch up the condiments on my hot dogs with the hope it would keep my taste buds engaged.
Everything started off great. The dog tasted good, the Quirk was tasty, and the Royals took a 1-0 lead.
The second inning was a reality check. The seltzer and the hot dog buns were filling up my stomach a lot quicker than I anticipated. Burping was common and prodigious. The smell of hot dogs filled the air and – I can’t stress this enough – it wasn’t pleasant.
After Salvador Perez homered to give the Royals a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning, we had our first three competitors crash out. Emily, Cody and Josie all decided that it didn’t make sense to try to keep up with dogs and drinks and bowed out of the competition. Cody mentioned more than once he had “the hot dog shivers.”
I’d love to take this opportunity to tease them, but I think they made a smart decision – almost as smart as everyone who didn’t even begin the challenge.
Gut check
Ryan, Hannah, Tim and I pressed forward, continuing to finish our drinks and gobble up our glizzy each inning.
Everything became harder to accomplish. What once was a lovely, delicious meat tube wrapped in a fluffy bun became my mortal enemy. The texture taunted me with every bite. My only salvation were the condiments – anything to take away that hot dog taste.
I gave up on anything but mustard after the sixth inning. The ketchup somehow multiplied the hot dog taste and the relish was more than I wanted to put in my body, so I rode the mustard train.
Ryan put up a good effort but couldn’t continue after inning 6. It was down to three of us – Hannah, Tim and myself. Hannah and Tim made decisions to ditch the hot dog bun. A staunch traditionalist, I battled forward with the bun.
This is my hot dog, this is my bun. The Royals are winning, but this isn’t fun.
Closing it out
Eating that many hot dogs does something to you mentally. I started having issues putting together complete sentences and I know it wasn’t the Quirk’s fault.
Tim got incredibly angry when Royals Manager Matt Quatraro pulled Stephen Kolek, but he settled down when Daniel Lynch IV got KC out of the inning.
I used math to try to encourage Hannah and Tim to keep going, pointing out that we were 66.67% done. Really, I was just trying to keep myself going. I started talking to myself.
“It’s just mental. You can do this.”
It’s as if I was trying to summit a mountain, but the mountain was made of processed meat bits and flavored seltzer.
I unwrapped my ninth-inning dog to find an unsettling food in front of me. I slathered on some mustard, cracked open my last Quirk and tried to channel my inner Lucas Erceg.
There were two items I had to consume, and Erceg had a 2-run lead to protect.
The texture was nothing short of awful. Ryan and I had talked earlier in the afternoon about what to do “next year” for the 9-9-9 but at this point I’m unsure if I’ll ever eat a hot dog again.
Hannah, Tim and I made it through hot dog nine and finished our drink before Erceg slammed the door on St. Louis. The Royals had snapped their six-game losing streak, and we had completed the 9-9-9 Challenge. This was the ultimate slump-buster.
In my hot dog haze, I built a tower out of empty Quirks and balled up aluminum foil.
It’s not much of a trophy and it was knocked over within 10 minutes, but it felt like the right thing to do.
We all took a picture together but I don’t know where that is – Josie informed me I looked like I was taking a mugshot. I felt like I had been arrested by processed meat. They forced us to take another picture and I think I smiled.
It has been roughly 18 hours since I ate that last hot dog and I haven’t eaten anything since. I can guarantee you I won’t be eating a hot dog any time soon.
Maybe I’ll see if Emily wants me to fire up the grill and cook some brats?
