What's Good

The Crabs get most of the local press, but the summer sun shines on Bomber Field, too. The Humboldt B-52s haven't got a live band yet but the snack shack platoon is performing this season (Redwood Acres, Eureka). Pay for your entry stamp at the folding table and hook right once inside and find yourself immersed in the sounds of the season: the crack of the bat, applause from the crowd and the surf-like shhhh of the deep fryer.

On a recent evening the concessions counter was staffed by a pair of towering players, who shrugged and grinned as they relayed orders to the pros in the back, a couple of women pivoting in the narrow galley between tubs of shredded lettuce and patties on the hissing grill. As a customer went into a mild panic upon receiving her satellite dish of a quesadilla, we ordered the Bomber Burger with grilled onions ($8). 

Your debate over whether the hamburger is a sandwich is rendered irrelevant by this cheese-topped beef patty with lettuce, tomatoes and onions (grilled or raw), all of which is held together by a pair of grilled cheese sandwiches instead of a bun. It's a gimmick that works. The flattened sandwiches are both sturdier and tastier than a standard white bun — also weirdly not as painfully filling as one would imagine eating a cheeseburger and two grilled cheese sandwiches to be. And as you listen to the chosen walk-up music of the next batter, Will Smith's "Wild Wild West," it's a reminder that anything goes in the summer. Well, almost.