They were definitely buying peanuts at the old ball game at Seaman Stadium last week.
Darcy “the Hawker” Fairbourn set an unofficial record when he sold 1,480 bags of peanuts during the Dawgs’ 4-3 victory over the Swift Current Indians on June 30.
“There’s a guy who works for the Minnesota Twins and in our circles he is known as the world’s greatest hawker,” said Fairbourn. “The most he has ever sold is 800 in a game.”
Fairbourn came up with the idea after having a few “refreshments” among his peers after a Stampeders’ football game.
“Myself and a bunch of hawkers were socializing after work and we decided it would be a fun stunt to do,” Fairbourn said. “One time, I sold 600 and something beers at the Grey Cup — the 13th man game — so I thought I could come close to it, but I didn’t think I would thrash it.”
Of course, selling beer to Roughrider fans at Grey Cup is like selling umbrellas during the monsoon season. Fairbourn needed some ingenuity to sell 1,000 bags of peanuts at $5 a pop at Seaman Stadium.
One of the reasons fans were shelling out the money for goobers was part of the proceeds went to Okotoks KidSport, an organization providing financial aid so youth can play sports.
“I first approached William Gardner (Dawgs master of ceremonies) more as a joke than anything and he saw it as something we could do as a fundraiser,” Fairbourn said.
One of Gardner’s heroes is the great baseball promoter Bill “As in Wreck” Veeck, who famously brought the three-foot-seven Eddie Gaedel to the plate for the St. Louis Cardinals. Gardner helped rally the crowd — one corporation stepped up and bought 200 bags of peanuts from the Hawker.
Fairbourn uses his baseball skills to get his bags of peanuts across big distances. He gets the fans’ order and then throws a bag of peanuts followed by a tennis ball with a slit in it to the fan. The fan then puts the money he owes in the tennis ball, who tosses it back to the Hawker.
You would have thought it was Wimbledon and not Seaman Stadium the way the tennis ball was flying back and forth.
“You have got to have a big promotion going,” Fairbourn said. “When people see the tennis ball going, it gets them going.”
He stands by what he sells.
“I love ’em,” Fairbourn said of peanuts. “I love peanut butter and everything… I just let the product sell themselves.”
As for whether the record will actually appear in print in the Guinness Book of World Records, Fairbourn doesn’t know.
“I e-mailed them and they didn’t get back to me, but I will know and that is the main thing,” Fairbourn said. “The best thing is we raised more than $4,400 for KidSport.”
KidSport Okotoks coordinator Nick Ruigrok was bouncing around like a kid who had eaten 25 Payday bars.
“I am absolutely thrilled,” Ruigrok said. “I didn’t think we would get this much money. At $250 a kid, that means we will be able to fund 20 kids. That is a good chunk of kids we can start funding.”
