Nachos made with potato chips for some reason
Nachos made with potato chips for some reason. Seattle Mariners

Baseball is almost back, and while this year's Mariners team is not coming into the season with much (any?) hype, going to Safeco Field is still the best. And this year, as they do every year, the Mariners upgraded the food options inside the park with some carb heavy new options so that you can properly destroy your physique in honor of new Mariners first baseman Dae-Ho Lee.

The new food, created under the direction of local food-directing man Ethan Stowell, is all as good as you would expect from Stowell. The big addition this year was a slate of solid new sandwiches. My personal favorite was porchetta and pesto on really good bread. Noted Stranger genius Ben Beres favored a grilled ham and cheese concoction that he described as "fucking delicious, man." There are a bunch of nacho options made with potato chips instead of tortilla chips for some reason. Sweet Iron Waffles will be selling waffles. All the good food was good.

While tasty, this year's new food suffers from a lack of great menu puns. The pinnacle of Mariners food puns remains the Ichi-roll, which continues to be available even as Ichiro plies his trade in Florida. For comparison, the new sandwich shop where the porchetta sandwich will be available is called, "the Sultan of Sandwich." This is in reference, presumably, to both the Earl of Sandwich and Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat. Squeezing two references and word play into one name? That's a classic example of trying to do two things and accomplishing neither.

Another missed opportunity: Absolutely none of the new Hempler's sausages the park is offering are called "The Big Unit," in honor of newly minted hall-of-farmer Randy Johnson. Come on, Mariners. Pick that low hanging fruit!

Despite some really good new options this year, as always, the best way to eat at Safeco Field is by bringing in your own food. Safeco has a customer-friendly policy in this regard. As good as the porchetta sandwich was, it was not as good as the version that Rain Shadow Meats or Salumi makes for the same price. If you're broke, you're still better off saving some money stopping at Seattle Deli for a bahn mi on the way to the stadium.

While you can bring your own food into Safeco Field, bringing your own drinks in is a Hisashi Iwakuma-level Safeco-No-No. The most surprisingly great new drink offering was a grapefruit vodka slushy from Deep Eddy Vodka that managed to be tart and refreshing, rather than the too sweet concoction I feared I would be pouring down my gullet at noon on a weekday. Also too strong and delicious for noon on a weekday, but perfect for a Friday evening game, were new draft beer options from Georgetown Brewery and Schooner Exact.

So yeah. Food and baseball. My take on food and baseball: global warming is bad, Donald Trump could be president, football is killing our nation's greatest athletes. I guess I'm suggesting that we all watch baseball this summer, and eat sandwiches and drink unless you don't drink for good reasons. And maybe I'm being naive, and we shouldn't eat sandwiches and watch baseball. But given the anxiety that capitalism heaps upon us combined with the collective low-level anxiety that our world's environmental degradation is also causing us, well... at least I know the Mariners are the Mariners, and why not indulge in that for a couple hours every couple weeks this summer? Who knows how bad things are going to get, and if you recycle your beer cups, you can maybe enjoy some of the fleeting moments we have left in this current status quo without hurting anyone.