All 30 MLB teams around the country have a variety of delicious foods for fans to enjoy during games. But earlier this week, Detroit Tigers on-field reporter Daniella Bruce shared her rather negative reaction to trying arguably the strangest delicacy that can be found at an MLB stadium.
On Wednesday, the Detroit Tigers finished up their three-game set against the Seattle Mariners. But not before Bruce tried a T-Mobile Park staple, chili-lime chapulines, otherwise known as roasted grasshoppers.
That was discussed on Friday’s Tigers-White Sox broadcast.
Andy Dirks, who mistook the grasshoppers dish for crickets, asked Bruce what her experience was trying the chapulines.
“Daniella Bruce, our intrepid reporter, went hunting for some food in Seattle,” said Tigers color analyst Andy Dirks. “I don’t know what was better, that ice cream or the crickets. Those cilantro-lime crickets. Daniella, did you try them?”
And Bruce was far from excited about the snack.
“I did taste one,” replied Bruce. “One. I told you I would do it right. And then I got this little cup of crickets. I thought they might be fried, you might not know that it’s a cricket right away. But it just looked like dried crickets. They were okay.”
Andy Dirks went on to disgust those watching at home by going into detail about how he used to eat crickets without any kind of cooking or seasoning involved, going into detail about the pop they made when you bit into them.
“Did it pop in your mouth?” asked Dirks.
“Yeah, it was a weird crunch,” replied Bruce.
“When I used to eat crickets, that’s what I used to remember if the pop,” added Dirks.
When asked by Bruce whether he would cook the crickets he ate, he detailed that he did not, instead simply catching them in the basement of his childhood home and then eating them without any preparation.
“Andy, did you cook them or anything?” asked Bruce.
“Maybe don’t want to talk about that… I mean, I didn’t know you needed to cook a cricket,” said Dirks. You just scoop it up. They used to chirp in our basement all the time. I would go hunt them. My mom would hear them and say, ‘I hear one.’ And I would go and track it down because they would keep you up at night.”
“Well, that one probably didn’t have the cilantro-lime flavor,” added Bruce.
“It did not,” added Dirks.
Dirks likely doesn’t find himself eating too many crickets or grasshoppers these days. But either way, it has to make Bruce at least feel a little bit better about her insect-eating experience to hear that her on-air partner had it much worse.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.