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CHICAGO -- To understand the life of a professional ballpark vendor -- my life, on and off for the past six years in San Francisco, Oakland and Chicago -- you must know first and foremost that it's a hustle. You don't swipe a timecard. You get paid by commission, so if you can't hawk a Drumstick to save your life, you get four hours of minimum wage. But for a savvy big-league vendor, there's good money to be made. Speed is the name of the game -- the reason for pouring two beers at once, targeting customers near the aisles (and not nickel-rummaging grannies or bill-rumpling 8-year-olds) and using coin dispensers for quicker access to quarters.

Second, it's a competition. Whether at Wrigley Field, Candlestick Park, or the Oakland Coliseum, every vendor is out there for himself. Racking up the game's highest sales total isn't just a matter of economics, it's about pride. There is a wide disparity: The best vendors routinely outsell the slowest vendors by two- and even three-to-one ratios. Otherwise average citizens -- part-time school teachers, security guards, and community college knockabouts -- gain auras of invincibility when they rack up consistently high volumes.

Third, it's highly individualistic. We all dress the same but each vendor is his own man with his own business model. Some opt for slick professionalism, others for self-effacing humor. Some are outright showmen. Take the vendor's "call." You can go straight up: "Hey, peanuts here!" You can go risqué: "Hey, get your sack-a-nuts here!" You can go clever: "Hey, what a day for a ballgame, let's buy two!" You can go bizarro: "Hey, peanuts here, the official snack of Neifi Perez [or insert your own seldom-used utility player name here]!"

And you show up when you want. When you want to roll over in bed, or go skirt-chasing, or simply serve yourself a six-pack or two for a change, you don't have to make a plugged-nosed call feigning a sick day. Your vending colleagues will be much obliged to profit off your idleness.

In the vending world, no two days are the same. I've witnessed beer brawls. I've been offered illicit substances ("Hey bro, I'll give you a hit of this for a malt ..."). I've concocted successful pickup lines -- over a bag of cracker jacks -- that would make Madonna cry foul. I've endured barrages of peanut shells and verbal abuse, beer cups and giveaway items. Some days I've moved more product in three hours than the Cali Cartel could dream of, but I've also walked lonely aisles with soggy pretzels on foggy nights.

And I keep coming back. Vending is amazingly addictive. I signed up on a whim when I was 18 and a senior in high school. Six years, five stadiums and a college degree later, I'm still in the game. Every time I say I've had enough, a huge weekend series crops up, the sun comes out, and I'm piling on another load, breaking open a couple of rolls of quarters and sauntering out into the sunshine. Few guys think they'll last more than a summer in this job, but many spend a decade swearing it's their last season. And countless vending stories start like this: "Well, back in the '70s ..."

The grand total of beer cups in this Wrigely Field photo: 7. Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Here's the first installment of my adventures from the summer of 2004 -- "The Vendor Chronicles: Chicago."

WRIGLEY FIELD, Sunday, May 23, Cubs vs. Cardinals

"Hey, sweethearts, could you break up the lovefest and listen up?"

The union boss is calling us -- the assembled vendors, that is -- to order. Rosy cheeked and surly, he reels off a litany of complaints. "Wear the hat provided for you. And put it on straight, OK?"

The sea of more than 200 blue jerseys groans inside the vendor's cage on Clark Avenue, a block north of Wrigley Field on the city's north side. The union boss senses the shifting tide. "I don't wanna hear it, all right? Wear your hats the way you're supposed to. You don't need to look cool. You're cool enough just being a vendor, all right?"

Indeed. Wrigley Field vendors, like their ballpark, are some of the best. Cocky and ultra-competitive, a Wrigley vendor is as salty as the peanuts he serves and as bitter as the beer. The veterans are aggressive and angry with the rookies, so by the end of the season, even a 16-year-old selling lemon ices has acquired a hard edge.

Amazingly, I am given beer to sell -- Old Style, the low-class alternative to Budweiser. Beer is the vending cash cow, and in Chicago it's a hell of a heifer. Vendors in California, my home state, lost beer in 1987, when the California Highway Patrol pushed through legislation banning in-seat beer sales. Vending incomes and internecine bleacher violence levels on the left coast have never been the same.

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The sky swirls with dark clouds. There's nothing like Old Style to pass away a rain delay. I forgot to bring my strap, the only real essential vending equipment. Holding a can of hot dogs or a double-tray of beer is worse than walking around with a 19-inch TV, so if you don't have a strap, you're gonna make like Dave Burba and fold in the fourth inning.

I'm able to coax one off a hot dog preparer, or "prep," in exchange for a handshake sweetened with a $5 bill. The strap is fraying, huge and not adjustable, meant for a pork-padded Chicago belly, not my bony, vegetable- and fish-fed San Francisco frame. But the National Anthem has started, so it'll have to do. I get my cups and load of 20 16-ounce Old Style cans, and waddle out to the stands down the right-field line.

The Cubs' chief rival, the Cardinals, are in town on this Sunday afternoon. The sun soon begins to rip through the clouds, beaming rays of thirst-inducing sunlight on my sections. Bliss. The customers clamor for my product like monkeys in a cage. My second sale is for 10 beers, with a $10 tip. I dig my nails under the can tops and snap open frothy cold one after frothy cold one, always careful to ID anyone who looks like they've never seen Ron Santo in a jersey.

"I've seen these before," says a sleepy-eyed, rotund customer, giggling and sucking down his old suds so he can buy two new beers.

By the bottom of the fourth inning, the humidity is debilitating. I miss a step and almost take a 20-beer tumble onto Jason Isringhausen and Julian Tavarez in the St. Louis bullpen. It's crunch time now: I start calculating how many tray-loads I can hawk before beer sales are cut off in the bottom of the sixth. Then, just when I'm in the middle of a pour, everyone stands up and starts stampeding toward me. It's not a beer riot, it's a foul ball, and it's heading straight at me. I tense my belly against my tray and absorb several blubbery bodies ramming me at full inebriated inertia.

"Smack! ...Whoaaah!" The ball careens off a flailing hand and spins a couple of rows down. My beer, miraculously, has survived, and is still servable. I hand over my preserved treasure with pride. "Thanks, chief," says a suit with a Cubs hat on backward, and breaks me off a $2 tip.

It's the top of the sixth, and I'm topping off the last beer of my load. It's been a fast game -- too fast, in fact. I'm desperately hoping Albert Pujols will slash a double, force a pitching change, and give me time to reload with 20 fresh cold ones.

Pujols fouls a few off and then hits a moon shot to left that lands on Waveland Avenue. Beautiful. It'll hopefully induce Dusty Baker to make a trip to the mound. I've got time to reload. As Pujols slowly trots toward first, I power-walk back to the load room. I feel a tap on my shoulder. A huge, sweaty, bald-headed monster of a fan leans over me. "Hey buddy, there's peanut shells in my beer," he says through pursed lips.

Albert Pujols tried to start a Cardinals comeback -- and buy the vendors more time -- with his blast. He did neither. Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Now if I were his mother, I'd tell him that it's probably because he errantly dropped them in there, but I'm worried he might try to put my head through my tray. So instead I say sympathetically, "Oh no, can I get you another one?" -- knowing that this is not actually a possibility. He looks at my tray and sees that it's full of empties. Realizing my ploy, he cracks an uneasy grin. Then, covering up his loss, he throws his head back and scoffs, "Ah, you only got Old Style, I wanted Bud anyway." He turns and strolls away, a defeated bully.

I hustle back to the load room, but the delay has cost me too much time and I don't make the cut-off. I have to check in. I return my strap to the prep (I had only asked for a one-game rental), turn in my money, and find out my earnings. $45 in tips, $40 in commission.

I'm too embarrassed to tell the other Old Style guys -- they probably made twice as much. Still, it wasn't a bad first day at Wrigley. I devour a couple of Chicago dogs with grilled onions, watch Joe Borowski retire Pujols, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen in order to end the game, then follow the flood of fans out the gates onto Waveland Avenue.

I buy a coconut ice cream bar from one of guys with a portable cart. Gotta support the guys on the outside, the farm system. I may be a major league vendor, but I won't ever let it go to my head.

Dan Hoyle is a ballpark vendor, freelance writer and actor. His one-man play, Circumnavigator, opens Aug. 6 in his hometown of San Francisco.