LIVE TO EAT: Opening day in Cincinnati, a Skyline Chili Cheese Coney giveaway and my recipe for Vegetarian Cincinnati Chili.

Baseball is back, and finally life makes sense again.

I wrote a brief post over at Food & Dining Magazine's web site about chili and baseball: Score a Free Skyline Chili Cheese Coney.

My mantra often is misunderstood. It's "Death to Chains, Except for Skyline," and that's because we all have our exceptions in life. I've never been a Reds fan as such, but a ballgame in Cincinnati with Skyline (or other local options discussed below) and Hudepohl (okay, maybe Little Kings Cream Ale) touches all the traditional bases for me in some inexplicable but fulfilling way.

And: It's a style of chili, so spare me your outraged blather. While traveling in Central Europe I've had dishes called goulash served in a variety of ways, united only by the use of paprika. So it goes with chili powder. The article link is followed by my recipe for Vegetarian Cincinnati Chili, which is a year-round mainstay of the 1117 East Spring Street Neighborhood Association.

Play ball, damn it.

Is Cincinnati chili actually chili? A dive into the city's most famous dish, by Nick Kindelsperger (Chicago Tribune)

You can order Cincinnati chili with just spaghetti (chili spaghetti or a 2 way), but most people go with at least a 3 way, which adds shredded cheddar cheese. Go with a 4 way, and you can add either diced onion or beans. A 5 way includes both. Nick Kindelsperger toured Cincinnati's chili houses, coming up with these five recommended versions. You'll find they look all alike, but the differences are clear when you plunge in your fork.

By any reasonable definition, Cincinnati chili is not chili. It's served on a plate. You eat it with a fork. It's ladled on spaghetti and topped with an avalanche of shredded cheddar that blankets the entire top, concealing almost all the chili underneath. Most damning, there are hardly any chiles in the mix. And isn’t that why it’s called chili in the first place?

If this all sounds like the beginning of an epic slam against a beloved regional Midwest dish, the kind we've been exploring all month, set down your freshly sharpened pitchforks. I've been a fan since my first bite in college. When I lived in London for six months, my mom regularly mailed me cans of the stuff to tide me over. I am a convert.

But until I swung by Cincinnati recently for a madcap, 24-hour chili tour, I'd never really considered just how little the dish had to do with what most people consider chili ...

And now, the recipe.

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Vegetarian Cincinnati Chili

4 – 6 “medium” servings, which translates to 4 for us

This recipe is from my late mother’s file, via the Mulloys, her next-door-neighbors. I've revised it to use kidney beans in place of the ground beef, so if you take your Cincinnati-style chili with meat or without beans, this recipe may not be for you.

Chili fixings

Olive oil or other cooking oil

2 medium yellow onions, peeled and chopped

4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

Approx 24 to 26 ounces of liquid. My mother's recipe called for water, but this isn't the way I cook. After many years of experimentation, I've settled on 12 ounces of beer and a 14-oz can of veggie broth. American Pale Ale works well, as does just about any malty beer. Feel free to be creative.

1 & ½ teaspoons apple vinegar
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons cumin
1 & ½ teaspoons allspice
1 & ½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 can Rotel (habanero; 10-oz)
1 can Rotel (green chili; 10-oz)

3 cans (16 oz) of dark or light kidney beans, rinsed

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Saute chopped garlic and onions in oil until tender; a few minutes.

Add the remainder of the ingredients except kidney beans. Bring to a boil, then lower the temperature and simmer for two hours.

After two hours, add beans, again bringing chili to a boil before reducing temperature to simmer. Cook for another 45 minutes.

To serve

Boil and drain a box of spaghetti
Grate some cheddar cheese
Chop a couple of onions
Have on hand some hot sauce on the Skyline model, or Tabasco, or something in that vein. Be sure you use oyster crackers

Serve the chili atop the spaghetti and dress it out.

THE BEER BEAT: Cincinnati area lagers during Reds baseball on Thursday, June 8. I hear they serve Bud Light at Louisville Bats games.

On Thursday, the Cincinnati Reds hosted the St. Louis Cardinals at Great American Ball Park.

For me, day baseball is the bee's knees, and I gratefully accepted Mark's invitation to join him and Graham for a 12:35 p.m. "getaway game" (afterwards the Reds were to fly to Los Angeles to begin a road trip). The Reds won, completing a rare home sweep of the Cardinals.

We parked in Newport on the Kentucky side, just a block away from the Hofbrauhaus. After a delicious Schwarzbier and pretzels in the Biergarten, it was a 25-minute walk across the Purple People Bridge to the stadium.

Thursday was a humidity-free afternoon, with temperatures in the mid-70s, variable cloudiness and a breeze here and there. Just glorious for baseball.

Admittedly I didn't undertake a meticulous examination of the beer selections at Great American Ball Park. Therein lies a digression.

Honestly, 15 years or more spent highlighting the myriad deficiencies of Louisville Bats management with respect to generally truncated local "craft" beer prospects has worn me to a nub. It's been at least three years since I bothered attending a Bats game for precisely this reason, and I can't be bothered to so much as complain.

Philistines then, now and forever, but look -- new for 2017!

Craft Beer Friday

New for 2017! Enjoy your choice of a variety of regional, local and national craft beers located at the Craft Beer Friday portable on the main concourse behind section 127. Each month will feature a new craft beer.

How very avant-garde of them. Next thing you know, Bats management will admit to the existence of iPhone selfies and have a special commemorative event -- or maybe it's finally time for a Mike Calise Bobblehead Night.

At the same time, periodic visits to major league parks in recent years have convinced me that in the big leagues, they're getting it. In Minneapolis in 2014 and Cleveland last year, local "craft" choices were many and varied, if predictably pricey.

On Thursday in Cincinnati, with exemplary seats down the line behind first base, there actually was an entertaining game to watch on a beautiful afternoon. At the risk of heresy, beer almost was secondary.

Still, I did some foraging.

Just behind us on the concourse was evidence of what happens when AB InBev hoovers the "craft" options and runs them through the Grand Trojan Zombie Filter. At first glance, it's a decent enough selection, but with all the profits going to the wrong shareholders.

Sorry, but AB InBev has enough money. They don't need any of mine.

Acknowledging that most of the cash spent on a $14 stadium beer is going to concessionaires and wholesalers -- in fact, I believe one of those ten commandments on display at the nearby Ark Encounter reads to this hallowed effect -- I'd rather it go for a local beer.

Blessedly, there were options. Obviously, Bud Light isn't local, though the others are.

It's called the Brewery District, located on the main concourse, situated behind home plate. The layout is logical, with Cincinnati-brewed beers on one side and national/international choices on the other.

For the record, I had only a couple of beers. Both were good, and I was satisfied.

1. Listermann Brewing Company's Losantiville (or Losantaville, or Losantville) Pre-Prohibition Lager, with as many as three alternate spellings and almost no on-line information (grr), although it was tasty.
2. Christian Moerlein Helles Lager, which I found exceptional and would seek again.

Next up: Cubs versus Rays in Chicago on July 5. My last time in Wrigley Field was during the Reagan Administration. Is there anything better than Old Style there now?

To hell with this. I'm going to a ballgame.

Road trip!

Cincinnati Reds vs. St. Louis Cardinals, at Great American Ball Park, June 8, 2017

I love day games.

I love day games on a Thursday in June when the high temperature is only 76 degrees.

I love them even more when someone else drives. Thanks, Mark. I'm taking a vacation day from blogging. If there's to be an ON THE AVENUES column this week, it will come on Friday.

Or whenever.

Now for the important news: What to Drink at a Cincinnati Reds Game, and also this:

Expect to see many of the same breweries as last year, but they'll change the offerings up a bit. In moves fitting for a baseball stadium, MadTree's PsycHOPathy will be replaced with the brewery's Rounding Third Red IPA, and Rhinegeist's Truth with its Hustle. In addition to those, you'll also find offerings from several other local breweries: Blank Slate, Braxton, Listermann, Moerlein, Mt. Carmel and Rivertown.

Bernie Carbo's brightest baseball moment, 40 years ago tonight.

40 years ago tonight, Bernie Carbo made possible Carlton Fisk's legendary World Series home run.

But what wasn't known at the time was Carbo's condition -- not just for Game Six of the 1975 World Series, but virtually every game he played in his big league career.

Yes, that's right: Baseball's substance abuse scandals did not begin during the steroid era. In 1970, Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" arguably offered the first public confirmation of drugs in baseball, primarily alcohol and greenies (amphetamines), although Doc Ellis memorably insisted that he pitched a no hitter while journeying on LSD.

By the mid 1980s, it was cocaine -- and Enos Cabell remarked in court that it made him a better player. Doubtless, Carbo would disagree.

I was watching this game back in '75, none the wiser that Carbo had spent the day drinking beer and smoking dope. Cubs fans, take note: It required four World Series appearances by the Red Sox between titles, so get out there, pay your dues, and ... wait, what's that?

You've been to the World Series how many times since 1908?

Seven?

Never mind.

As for the decade of the 1970s, see the Big Hair and Plastic Grass web site. I also blogged about this book in 2013: Big Hair and Plastic Grass. Get a copy and read it. It's richly entertaining.