I mean no disrespect to the eight-time champion by asserting his feat was not quite as impressive as it seems. Nathan’s Famous franks (frankfurters) just ain’t what they used to be. They’ve shrunk over the years by, I reckon, over 25 percent, mostly in their girth. I had two in five minutes last month at the original Coney Island location. They were shamefully skinny. There was little of the signature juice and none of celebrated snap.

Back in my 20s I had a recurring Coney Island dream: I would close my eyes for a moment, then reopen them to see the world’s playground in its heyday. All the vanished arcades, rides and funhouses would be back. A Nathan’s frank would cost five cents. My grandfather would buy me two, when one was plenty.

Now I have a new dream: I close my eyes for a moment, then reopen them to see the Nathan’s incredible shrinking hot dog restored to its original, plump size. I buy two – one for my son and one for me. With our first bites the natural casing enclosing the franks breaks open. The plump hot dogs explode with juices and, we, with happiness.

The plan unravelled. For starters, the Yankee fans were feeding like ducks at a foie gras farm, only their indiscriminate gorging was voluntary. They were relishing the very abuse from which I was hoping to spare them. But ultimately it was the numbers posted on the blue menu boards that threw me off course.

The food concessionaires at Yankee Stadium are bound by a regulation of the New York City health department requiring restaurants with 15 or more outlets to list calorie counts for all the foods and drinks they sell. But a law intended to help combat obesity was having the opposite effect on me.

Looking at the menu for the Japanese food stand called Soy Kitchen, I saw that the 160-calorie veggie (sushi) roll was priced at $9.75. That’s about 6 cents per calorie. By way of comparison, at the hot dog and hamburger stand called Fan Favorites, the 1,341-calorie portion of Nathan’s cheese fries was priced at $7.25 – about 1/2 penny per calorie. Clearly the cheese fries were a much better value, calorie for a calorie, than the veggie roll. And no single item anywhere in the stadium was more exorbitant than Poland spring water: $5 for zero calories. Positively criminal – I’ll never splurge for bottled water at a baseball game again!

In the end I did sample 7 or 8 food items. The sliders (mini-burgers), chicken barbecue sandwich and the Philly cheesesteak were dismal. The franks, though carrying the once vaunted Nathan’s name, were disappointing. No snap. No juice. The garlic fries were pretty good. The single best item was the hand-carved steak sandwich from the fine Manhattan butcher Lobel’s.

Lobel’s has installed a windowed reproduction of its Madison Avenue butcher shop on the stadium’s field-level concourse. You can see what the USDA dry-aged strip looks like before the marbled steaks are trimmed, grilled and carved. It’s a darn good sandwich, despite the ordinary roll atop which the tender yet firm slices of juice-dripping strip steak are layered. And though $15 may sound like a lot for a sandwich, it amounts to a measly 3 cents for every succulent calorie.