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'Pops' Steinberg, 81, iconic vendor at Phillies games
"HEY, HOT DOG here, who else?"
"Give your tongue a sleigh ride."
"Hey, cotton candy here! How sweet it is!"
Phillies fans from way back would recognize those cries from the little guy with the sharp nasal voice as he plodded up and down the stairs of three stadiums for four decades selling hot dogs, ice-cream and cotton candy.
Maybe not everybody knew his name. They called him "Pops," especially as he got older and aged from a "Pop" to a "Pop-Pop," with accumulating grandkids.
But his real moniker was Seymour Steinberg, and that accent you heard as he shouted out the names of his products was pure South Philly Jewish.
Seymour died Sunday, at least partly as a consequence of his years of tramping up and down stadium steps. He was 81 and lived in South Philadelphia.
He had surgery on his left knee in 1998, and when Citizens Bank Park opened he sold cotton candy from a booth on the 300 level, no longer able to manage the steps.
"The vending, going up and down the steps from Connie Mack to the Vet and standing on his feet in the 300 level at Citizens took a toll on his legs and veins," said his granddaughter Heather Steinberg.
"Amputations led to a weak heart and failing kidneys - all for what he loved to do. He had such a passion for baseball."
"For a lot of people, I think 'Pops' was synonymous with baseball and summertime at the Vet," said longtime fan David Gambacorta, a Daily News reporter.
"He was a fixture at all of the home games when I was growing up. Whenever I think back to the days when my friends and I would sneak down to the lower levels of the stadium, I can picture him making his way through the stands, calling out 'Cotton candy, here!' in that nasal, singsong voice of his.
"In a way, he was as unique to the Vet and the Phillies as Harry [Kalas] and Richie [Ashburn]."
Seymour was a walking history of Philadelphia baseball. When he was about 8, an uncle took him to a 1936 Phillies game at the old Baker Bowl.
He remembered a soap ad in right field with the caption, "The Phillies Use Lifebuoy." A graffiti artist had written beneath it, "And they still stink."
Yes, Pops endured many a losing season. There were times, he said, when he was lucky to make $15 or $20 a game because the disappointed crowds were so thin. Of course, hot dogs were only 25 cents when he started.
Evening Bulletin sportswriter Jim Barniak once called Seymour "the Babe Ruth of vendors."
When Seymour started vending in 1954, the Athletics were still in business. That year, he worked 154 home games, 77 for the Phillies and 77 for the Athletics. He also worked fairs and other events over the years.
Of course, he couldn't support a family as a vendor, so he spent 41 years working for the Postal Service.
Back in 1974, Seymour left vending briefly to open a variety store at 7th Street and Oregon Avenue with a brother. But he soon went back to the Vet.
"I missed the ballpark," he said at the time.
Seymour was born in Philadelphia to Albert and Anna Steinberg. He attended Bok Vocational High School. He married his wife, Beatrice, when she was 17 and he was 21. Beatrice died in 1989.
His granddaughter said passion for the Phillies runs in the Steinberg family. "We bleed Phillies red," she said. "I loved to spend time with Pop-Pop, listening to him tell how things were in the '40s and '50s. I love that stuff."
Seymour also is survived by four sons, Harry, Stephen, Scott and Sidney; two brothers, Walter and Harold; a sister, Arlene Maisus; six grandchildren; a great-granddaughter; a step-granddaughter, and two step-great-grandchildren.
He was predeceased by another son, Edward, who died at 1 1/2 in a crib accident.
Services: 2 p.m. tomorrow at Goldsteins' Rosenberg's Raphael Sacks Funeral Home, 310 Second Street Pike, Southampton. Burial will be in Shalom Memorial Park, Lower Moreland.
