Sports Candy: Getting You Through the Darkness

Hey everyone, and welcome to the worst period of time of year for sports. 

One football game left, no baseball, and no fantasy except for the random NBA league that you check once every couple of weeks. March Madness brackets won’t go out for well over a month and, to top it off, it’s been ungodly cold and dark when you leave the house in the morning and get home at night. 

This translates into rough times at top seven headquarters as well, so it’s time like these where one has to dig deep. Enter sports candy. Some types of candy just remind you of sports—candy that is directly related to sports, or that they used to sell at your old Little League park.

It’s much like the Supreme Court’s ruling on obscenity—I don’t know what sports candy is, but I know it when I see it (or taste it). And it’s delicious. Enjoy.

7. Those little chocolate balls

It is so unspecific that it can’t go any higher than No. 7, but these usually show up when a co-worker gets them for you in a Secret Santa because he/she knows you are a fan of that sport’s chocolate ball. 99 percent of the time, it is the worst possible tasting chocolate, but the wrapper is at least cool.

6. Now and Laters

I hope that I’m not alone here, but at my old Little League park, these things were basically equivalent to money. Never before or since has something that cost a dime been in such hot pursuit, and the only candy that came close was the also-dime-costing Jolly Rancher Stix, which was simply hardened flavored sugar and one of the most brilliant ideas conceived by man.

5. Pez

There is plenty of sports-related Pez to go around.  Here’s the scary part—during the extensive research that goes into each top 7, I visited the Pez website, and, before entering the site, you must click on the continent that you live on. Pez is so huge that they cover the entire globe. I guess that this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Pez rules.

4. Reggie Bars

There have been other players that had candy named specifically after them, picture included. Ken Griffey Jr. in 1989 had himself a candy bar. Willie McGee had some cookies with his picture on them in St. Louis. Ditto Grimace, if he were an athlete. But the guy who started it was Reggie Jackson, whose Reggie bars were so famous the fans threw them on the field following home runs.

Sometimes, the fans would rush the field too.  There is no more entertaining piece of footage than the home run in Yankee Stadium where fans rush the field and the runner has to literally push people out of the way to get around the bases. A similar incident happened after one of the Celtics’ NBA championships—Larry Bird shoved around six people who stormed the court after they won. Good for society in general. Like this candy.

3. Baby Ruth

Whether or not it was supposed to be named for Babe Ruth, it did eventually show up in ads with Ruth’s picture included.  Plus, it was in "The Goonies," which is definitely a sports movie. Very few people can argue that chasing treasures hidden by one-eyed pirates is not a sport, and they will not do so very convincingly.

2. Topps Gum

How long did your bowl of Topps gum last?  Usually after buying a box of baseball cards (which were usually 36 packs), you would chew the first five or six sticks, but then begin setting them aside, usually in a bowl.

The bowl would be around halfway full of Topps gum after you were done opening your packs, and it would sit there for awhile. Very rarely was another piece of the gum eaten—there was something amazingly unappealing about Topps gum that was unaccompanied by Garth Iorgs and Wally Joyners. So the question is, how long did it last before it was thrown out? A week? A day? Ever buy a pack of cards from two or three years prior and still chewed the gum?  Topps gum never goes bad. You could open a pack of ’57 Topps and the gum would probably be fine.

1. Big League Chew

Was it possible to just put a few strands of Chew in your mouth? An unwritten rule of Big League Chew was that you had to cram at least half of the package into your mouth so that the first few chews were nearly impossible, and you were guaranteed to unleash around half a gallon of saliva in the immediate aftermath. It’s also surprising that Big League Chew never tested the waters with a plethora of flavors, which is usually inevitable with anything that gets to be big-time. For the longest time, it was just original and grape. They have mixed it up a little over the last few years, but, for the most part, they are staying true to the game.

The Top 7 is written by Jason Major. He once ate a Pez head in the mold of Bugs Bunny. Email him at [e-mail].