4.5 million views on Instagram, over 600k views on TikTok, and lots of chatter in hallways. Students he didn’t even know would bring it up to him. When the video first began going viral, Lakeside history teacher Mr. Nau said he was “terrified.”
“When things get legs on the internet, you have no control over where they go or how they’re received,” he said.
It all began at T-Mobile park. It was game four of the American League Championship Series (ALCS), and the Mariners faced the Blue Jays at home in a heated match-up. “The Mariners were losing,” Mr. Nau recalled, “and we were surrounded by a lot of Blue Jays fans, so I was trying to cheer a lot to keep the energy moving in the right direction.”
Suddenly, two women carrying hot dogs attached to parachutes — part of a Mariners promotion called “Hot Dogs from Heaven” — appeared in Mr. Nau’s section, ready to throw the hot dogs down to the lower bowl. As the promotion’s signature song, “Heaven is a Place on Earth,” played from the loudspeakers, Mr. Nau decided to give the hot dog throwers a shout…or two. What Mr. Nau didn’t know? The throwers were influencers Lily Claire (@lilyclaireclaire) and her friend Ava Pappas. The moment was caught on camera and later would go viral on Claire’s social media, giving birth to the “hot dog man.”
Claire’s video was essentially a montage of Mr. Nau yelling phrases such as “Stop giving them to the rich people” and “Throw them to me! I’m right here!”, and was captioned “Hotdogs from heaven is not for the weak” (on TikTok), and “Only slightly traumatized” (on Instagram), with the text on the video being, “‘You should throw the Hotdogs from Heaven, it’ll be fun’ they said…”
Luckily, the comment section definitely sided with Mr. Nau. Claire’s posts on both platforms were flooded with comments such as “dude has a point,” “so real tho,” “bros valid,” “that man is my hero,” “LMFAO,” and “give him a hot-dog!
“I was relieved that people saw it for what it was — goofing around at the baseball game and having a good time… I wasn’t trying to be obnoxious or anything like that,” Mr. Nau said.
As for why he was so energetic, Mr. Nau explains, “My wife loves Hot Dogs from Heaven … She really wants to catch a hot dog, but we’ve never been in a position to get one.” But during the game, much to his surprise, Mr. Nau saw that the hot dog throwers had come right to the end of his aisle and decided to shoot his shot.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my chance,’” he recounted, “I might actually get a hot dog from heaven.” Mr. Nau gave the throwers a call, expecting that they’d simply throw over a hot dog to him, but the task proved to be much more difficult. He started yelling and, when they still wouldn’t respond, decided to embrace the spirit of the game and have “a good time horsing around at the game.”
During the game, Claire remembers she was very nervous because this was her first time throwing the hot dogs, and the Mariners’ crew had informed her and Ava that they had just 60 seconds to throw all of the hot dogs off the balcony. As for why she had gotten the opportunity to throw the hot dogs in the first place, it was because of her past content collaborations with the Mariners, and her connection with a member of the marketing team.
“I was just very stressed, and everyone was yelling at us, and then I also heard one especially loud voice yelling,” Claire remembers. “But they also instructed us not to throw the hot dogs up to everyone until we threw all the ones with parachutes first.” Claire also noted that her thought process during the moment was that “I just need to get through this, then I’ll turn around and they’ll be happy.”
Back then, Claire foresaw the video going viral, but was surprised by how her audience reacted online. “I thought people would think, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so stressful throwing the hot dogs,’” she explained. “Instead, people were like, ‘Yeah, you gotta throw in the hot dogs [to him],’ so I was a little caught off guard by how mad everyone got at me.”
Claire said she wished she had posted the clip of Mr. Nau receiving his hot dog as part of the initial TikTok and let the surrounding fans know that they would receive hot dogs too.
In the moment, Mr. Nau said that he knew the interaction was being filmed, although he wasn’t aware that the two hot dog tossers were influencers. “I thought they were just random fans who had been selected, and it was just their friend who was filming them.” Additionally, he felt unfazed by the camera; “I was just having fun, and the longer it went on, the funnier it got, so I just kept going with it,” he said.
Mr. Nau also explained that he wouldn’t have even noticed the cameraman, except he presumed that the cameraman thought he was a nuisance for ruining his shot. Ironically, his presence did the opposite. Both videos on TikTok and Instagram are easily one of Claire’s most viewed videos on those platforms.
The million-dollar question is: Did the hot dog man ever actually get a hot dog? The answer is yes! Mr. Nau explained that he later learned that Hot Dogs from Heaven is not only for the lower levels to enjoy, and that they also have hot dogs without parachutes that they throw to the surrounding crowd after they finish throwing the parachutes off the edge. In fact, Claire posted a follow-up video with the text on the video being “Hotdog man gets his dog!!!”, which features Claire and Pappas throwing the hot dogs into the upper sections, followed by Mr. Nau yelling “It’s everything I ever wanted!”
In that sense, the story has a happy ending, although there was still one question to ask — is Mr. Nau always this passionate at baseball games? Turns out, he certainly is.
“My colleagues have never seen me in this mode before, but [my wife] knows that when I go to Mariners games, I just like to yell fun things at the team, but in a supportive way,” he remarked. “I’m not a jerk about it. I’m not a heckler… I was just having a good time at the baseball game.”