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The guy talking to himself on the outbound F train from Manhattan to Brooklyn over the last couple of weeks isn’t crazy.
He’s just practicing.
George Shea wants to make sure the speech is just right. The wording, the pacing, the delivery. So he’s been rehearsing it over and over.
He wants the thousands of people who hear him live on Coney Island, and the hundreds of thouxsands who will watch on TV, to laugh and then get inspired in short order.
He only gets one crack at this a year.
Anyone who has watched Nathan’s Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4th from Coney Island might not know Shea by name, but they know him.
Shea is the commissioner of Major League Eating, a job with wide ranging responsibilities. On July 4, that means he’s the guy in the boater hat with the microphone, the master of ceremonies of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.
For most of the past 20 years, there hasn’t been much suspense about who’ll win the event. Joey Chestnut’s digestive dominance is as powerful a dynasty as there is in American sports.
But regular viewers of America’s oddest holiday tradition raise the volume on the TV, waiting to see just what George Shea has come up with this year.
Host George Shea introduces the competitive eaters during a weigh-in ceremony before the Nathan's Famous July Fourth hot dog eating contest, Monday, July 3, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)AP
Shea is a different guy with a different life when he’s not wearing the hat. His day job is doing business media relations for the commercial real estate industry. He estimated that he spends 5 to 8% of his time on MLE and 90 percent doing more traditional professional public relations.
But much of that 5 to 8% is this month as he prepares for the Fourth of July, the high holy day of hot dogs on Coney Island.
While Shea is now an institution in Brooklyn, he’s originally from New England.
He was born in Brookline and lived in Cambridge until his family moved to Maine, first the suburbs of Augusta and then Bangor.
“It was a very Huck Finn place to grow up,” Shea said warmly.
He grew up going to Patriots games with his father and brother at old Foxboro Stadium, but calling him a sports fan would be an exaggeration.
After high school he headed to Columbia with dreams of being a writer, but when he realized things like food and rent cost money, he channeled his creativity into a public relations career.
“I should have gone to Wall Street,” he said. “I would have made way more money, but I wouldn’t have had as much fun.”
After graduation he got a job working for legendary New York public relations agent Morty Matz, whose eponymous company had the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs account.
Originally the hot dog contest was all about exposure. It didn’t feature competitive eaters, because there was no such thing. The goal was to get media coverage for free publicity.
Shea saw it for the first time in 1988. In addition to being a judge, his job was to rustle up some participants.
“There were no competitors. You had to find them. So some guy’s walking on the boardwalk and you say, ‘You, sir. Don’t turn your back on America. We need you to do the hot dog contest.’”
Inevitably Shea convinced enough people to fill the stage and then fill their bellies.
Shea took over the contest in 1991 and saw growth potential. Like Matz, Shea artfully used stunts to get attention for Nathan’s and Major League Eating, which he and his brother Rich founded in 1997. He sent IOC president Jacques Rogge a letter requesting consideration for inclusion in the Olympics.
He attempted to have a scholarly article on why thinner eaters had an advantage over larger competitors published in a medical journal.
When the IOC ignored the letter and the medical establishment denied his article, Shea shared his rejection with New York media. He positioned competitive eating as the sport of the everyman being rejected by the elitists.
The hot dog eating contest became the premier event on a Major League Eating circuit that includes a national tour of eating contests. Wings in Buffalo, pork rolls in New Jersey, oysters in New Orleans etc.
“It just blew it up, just expanded and expanded,” Shea said.
In 2001 Takeru Kobayashi helped take the Nathan’s contest to a new level. The Japan native was just 5-foot-8 and his listed weight ranged from 128 to about 160 pounds, but he ate 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes, nearly doubling the previous record.
His stature drew eyes to the event. People wanted to see how a guy that small could put away so much food. FOX did a two-hour special on the event.
Kobayashi dominated until Joey Chestnut arrived, starting an unmatched run of dominance.
Since 2007, Chestnut has only been beaten once (2015) and didn’t participate once (2024). He’s never finished fewer than 52 dogs and holds the record with 76 hot dogs in 12 minutes.
Chestnut’s dominance changed the way Shea and Major League Eating promoted the event. At first it was Chestnut vs. Kobayashi, but now Shea leans into Chestnut’s icon status — like Michael Jordan, Serena Williams or Wayne Gretzky — positioning him as an all-time great fans can watch in his prime.
Shea’s challenge is to come up with a new introduction every year that both lives up to Chestnut’s greatness and the lofty standard Shea has set for his intros.
There are 15 guys on the stage. Not everybody gets a full-on soliloquy.
Some are introduced with just their names, hometowns and a short list of eating accomplishments. Others are funny. He’s created superhero-like origin stories for many of them. The delivery is part preacher, part salesman and it all builds toward Chestnut.
“You can do some grand ones. ‘Competitive eating is the crucible through which greatness is forged,’ et cetera,” Shea said. “You can’t do 15. You can do eight or 10. So there has to be a mix. I sort of learned that by doing it. You do too much funny. It’s not funny. You do too much grand. It’s not grand.”
Sometimes the more outrageous the better.
“He lost his arm to a Bengal tiger in a boyhood visit to the Atlanta Zoo. But his arm grew back,” Shea said recounting his intro for Tim “Eater X” Janus in 2013. “And then he can speak Neutrino, the language of the sun.”
He saves his best material for Chestnut.
“What I’m trying to do is actually move people’s emotions in 30 seconds or 60 seconds and move them from zero to goosebumps,” he said.
Once Shea has written the script, he starts practicing. At home, in his car and on the train, despite the strange looks from the other passengers.
“There’s a lot of crazy people on the subway. I’m wearing a blue blazer and a pressed shirt,” he said. “So I probably get a pass.
“I’m sitting there mouthing the words. Because you cannot memorize oratory — if we grant it that title — by saying it in your head. You have to say it out loud,” he continued. “There’s a muscle memory to it. So I mumble it and then I say it over and over and over again until it’s second nature. You want to deliver these introductions in a way that is with complete ease.”
In fairness to them, they might still think he’s nuts even if they knew what he was doing and could hear his words clearly.
Because in 2015 he would have been mumbling:
“In a world of nothing. Of barren hills and cracked earth and once-proud oceans drained to sand, there will still be a monument to our existence. Bleached by the sun, perhaps, and blunted by time, but everlasting. Because this man represents all that is eternal in the human experience,” Shea said that day.
On Saturday, which is not only July 4, but the 250th anniversary of American independence, the contest will air on both ABC and ESPN. Shea expected his intro will have some patriotic overtones.
“When I introduce Joey, I’m going to say, “America, I give you America,’” Shea said.
Outtakes from a busy week...
The Top 5
Top 5 Worst Boston sports trades this century
5. Joe Thornton for Marco Sturm, Wayne Primeau, and Brad Stuart
4. Vaughn Grissom for Chris Sale
3. Logan Mankins for Tim Wright and a 2015 fourth-round draft pick.
2. Mookie Betts for Alex Verdugo, Connor Wong and Jeter Downs
1. Jaylen Brown for Paul George and picks
Real Jeopardy! Clue
Sports clues from actual editions of America’s favorite quiz show. As always, mind the date
CATEGORY: Names in Sports$800
Date: Feb. 18, 2026
Now with A.C. Milan, this U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team star got to play in Europe at 16 on his Croatian passport
Answer below
Today in Massachusetts Sports History
July 3
1932 — The Red Sox played their first Fenway Park Sunday game. Previously they had played at Braves Field on Sundays, since Fenway was too close to a church. (From RedSoxDiehard.com)
Lightning round
- Before Brad Stevens lost his mind, the top five was going to be Mel Brooks movies in honor of his 100th birthday. I’m partial to History of the World Part I.
- Mexico vs. England in the round of 16 in Mexico City should be outstanding.
- Freddy, the German soccer tourist, that I tried to find at Monday’s game, deleted his Twitter immediately after Paraguay upset Germany adding to the questions about whether he was ever really real to begin with.
Real Jeopardy! Question:
Who is Christian Pulisic?
Finally...
Happy National Fried Clam Day to Those Who Celebrate.
More Friday Outtakes
- The Red Sox could field a competitive roster from players they gave away for nothing
- Patriots should make the A.J. Brown deal, but keep their fingers crossed
- Celtics’ feel-good season is one loss away from becoming a legacy-staining disaster
- For Boston fans, the best week of the sports year is here
- After calling James Hagens up, Bruins need to give him a long leash
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