It's bad for a baseball player to choke in a clutch situation. It's even worse in a hot-dog eating contest.
Unfortunately for 19-year-old Brian Read, a pitcher for the amateur Seacoast Mavericks, he did both.
The college sophomore not only finished last in a charity hot-dog eating competition on Sunday, but he underwent surgery Tuesday to dislodge a piece of frankfurter caught in his esophagus, Seacoast Online reports.
“I started swallowing really prematurely," Read told the New Hampshire publication. "I didn’t chew my food very well."
Immediately after the event, -- held during the seventh inning stretch of a Futures Collegiate Baseball League game -- Read vomited.
The college athlete felt no better and threw up several more times into the next day. He couldn't drink liquids or even swallow his own saliva.
Doctors tried to relieve the obstruction by administering muscle relaxers and pain killers, but the wienie didn't budge.
An endoscopy revealed that 1.5 inch chunk of hot dog was wedged sideways at the point where the esophagus meets the stomach. That forced a surgeon to operate.
By Tuesday, Read was back to eating solid foods.
“I was taking the smallest bites and chewing it to a ground pulp," he said.
Now that he's recovered, Read is relishing the attention from his odd accident. He's tweeted several times about the mishap.
His debacle came days before the annual July 4th hot-dog eating contest at Nathan's restaurant in Coney Island. Joey "Jaws" Chestnut won for the seventh straight year by devouring a record 69 franks in 10 minutes.
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