“KOOOBAYYYAAASHIIIIIII!!!!!!!”

God and Lucifer battle for men’s souls!

The eaters rip in, dunking the sandwiches in the water cups and cramming themmouthward with no regard for manners or decorum.

Jarvis said, “Let’s face it: we’re on ESPN. If that’s not professional sports, I don’tknow what is.”

He didn’t mention it, but in 2001 the bass-fishing league was sold to ESPN for apurported $35 million

adies and gentlemen. It is said that pearls are the precipitate of sunlight, slowedand bent by the ocean until it forms a nugget of beauty inside the lowly mollusk.And likewise, this grilled-cheese sandwich is the precipitate of the divinespirit”—here the music shifts again, to a minor-key vamp, and Shea’s voice skewsdeep and dark—“captured here on earth in the most unlikely of places, deliveredto us in the image of the Virgin Mar

and he likes to say, tongue two-thirds in cheek, that eating hassurpassed hockey and badminton and is now No. 5 in America’s heart, afterbaseball, basketball, football, and golf.

This is the contest emcee: GeorgeShea, chairman of the IFOCE, which bills itself as “the governing body of allstomach-centric sport.”

One hundred and fifty curious heads swivel toward a manonstage in a dark blazer and a straw boater hat.

America’s greatest eater is also here. Sonya Thomas. Five foot five, 103 pounds.She calls herself the Black Widow, because she gleefully devours the males. Hereating titles are so numerous that promoters list them alphabetically: asparagus,baked beans, chicken nuggets, chicken wings, eggs, fruitcake, giant burger,hamburger, jambalaya, Maine lobster, meatballs, oysters, pulled pork, quesadilla,sweet-potato casserole, tacos, toasted ravioli, Turducken ..

n fifteen minutes the championship will be decided. It’s an eating contest.Whoever eats the most grilled-cheese sandwiches in ten minutes wins $3,500. Theprize pot has attracted some of the world’s top competitors—people who eatunder the banner of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, orIFOCE. They consider themselves professional athletes. Guys like Eric“Badlands” Booker, a 420-pound subway conductor, rapper, and world championin the doughnut, corned-beef-hash, and cheesecake disciplines. “Hungry” CharlesHardy, who just half an hour ago had his right biceps tattooed with the initialsIFOCE. Ed “Cookie” Jarvis, a Long Island real-estate agent who embroiders hisnumerous eating titles onto a gargantuan flowing robe with his portrait airbrushedon the front, flanked by a lighting bolt. Rich and Carlene LeFevre, the FirstCouple of competitive eating—a pair of sweetly manic retirees from the outskirtsof Las Vegas. Carlene is a consistent top-five finisher, and Rich, nicknamed theLocust, holds records in Spam (six pounds in twelve minutes), chili (one and ahalf gallons in ten minutes), and corny dogs (eighteen and a half in ten minutes

She has picked a fine day to grace southern California with Her presence. The sunis shining, the sky is blue.

the image of the Virgin Mary appeared on a grilled-cheesesandwich in the frying pan of Diana Duyser, a Florida jewelry designer.

mong the super-gluttons, on the front lines of competitive eating