Take her out to the ballgame: Cracker Jill joins Cracker Jack on beloved snack bag

Staff writer

When the Pittsburgh Pirates take the field this afternoon for their home-opener against the Chicago Cubs, fans will cheer, sip sodas and dig into iconic boxes of Cracker Jack.

Except some boxes will sport a strong, smiling woman named Cracker Jill.

"After more than 125 years as one of sport's most iconic snacks, Cracker Jack is adding a new face to its roster, with the introduction of Cracker Jill to celebrate the women who break down barriers in sports," Frito-Lay North America said in a press release.

Five diverse women grace the packaging of special-edition Cracker Jill bags, available at professional ballparks nationwide. The Cracker Jack brand is donating $200,000 to Women's Sports Foundation, and baseball fans who donate $5 or more to WSF when they purchase their candy-coated popcorn and other concession staples receive a Cracker Jill bag, while supplies last.

"I taught P.E. and, having been head coach of girls basketball for 24 years, that's a great thing," said retired Ringgold health and physical education teach Joe Ravasio, who also coached football. "It's uplifting, you know, for young girls."

Ravasio just hopes Cracker Jill contains prizes like the original snack.

The sweet-and-salty snack enjoyed straight from cardboard boxes depicting a cartoon Sailor Jack debuted at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, near the time the grandparents of retired Brig. Gen. Dave Papak, USMC, emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the United States.

"They lived, originally, in this little mining community called Hazel Kirk," said Papak, of Monongahela. "That's where my dad was born. When he was about 2 years old, my grandfather ... bought 40 or 50 acres out on this Cracker Jack Road."

A handful of families established farms and families on Cracker Jack Road, a six-mile stretch of pavement that runs through Carroll Township and has no ties to the iconic baseball snack.

"The main Cracker Jack Road, I’m almost positive it came from something that had to do with the coal business," said Papak. "It had nothing to do with the Cracker Jack snack."

The booming coal business followed Cracker Jack Road's run as a thriving dairy farm community.

"There were these well-established farms on that road. Most of them were all dairy farmers. All those farmers that my dad grew up with, they’re long gone," Papak said.

But a few structures dating to the early 1800s still stand along Cracker Jack Road, including a red-brick church and a schoolhouse-turned home, Papak said. He recalled dairy farmers congregating at his aunt's bar-restaurant Ginger Hill Inn and a childhood spent collecting berries and hunting on his grandparents’ farm.

Things changed, Papak said, when coal companies bought farm property and Route 43 cut through his grandparents’ yard.

"There is a lot of history on that road," said Papak.

History binds residents of Cracker Jack Road to one another; for instance, Ravasio lives in the home of Papak's father's childhood best friend.

And Ravasio's sweet childhood memories of indulging in Cracker Jack ties the local community to the international sensation that is a caramel-coated popcorn and salty peanut duo.

"I think that was the genuine, the striking characteristic of the box of Cracker Jack: OK, what is in there that I’m going to like, or I don't like it, can I trade it?" said Ravasio, who recalled bartering with neighbors for better prizes. He’d exchange plastic rings and animal figurines for his favorite prizes, including miniature baseball bats and balls.

"Those are the things that bring you a lot of joy. When you revert back to your childhood memories, you think of what you and your friends enjoyed ... and it certainly was the Mallo Cup, the Cracker Jack," said Ravasio.

Cracker Jack remained a staple snack at Forbes Field and other ballparks through Ravasio's early adulthood. But the snack's popularity began to wane.

"Once I got into my 30s ... you just didn't see it on the shelves," he said. "You had to really work hard to find, now, that Mallo Cup or that box of Cracker Jack."

In recent years, Cracker Jack has made a comeback, and is iconic once again at ballparks, including PNC Park and the Washington Wild Things stadium in North Franklin Township.

"It's a staple at all ballparks," said Christine Blaine, vice president of corporate partnerships for the Washington Wild Things. "There are other popcorn products that we sell, but, ‘Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,’ well. It's world-famous."

While not world-famous, Cracker Jack Road is having a moment, and has made folks nationwide chuckle.

"Believe me, there's been a minimum of two dozen times somebody’ll stop and say, ‘You really live on Cracker Jack Road?’" Ravasio said. "When you’re ... using your credit card, you say Cracker Jack Road. ‘No kidding. You really live on Cracker Jack Road?’

"It doesn't matter if you’re talking to somebody in Mississippi, Louisiana, California. It's a wonderful childhood memory for many, many people," said Ravasio. "I think that will always be the excitement of a box of Cracker Jack. The founding person ... (caused) a lot of joy and happiness, intrigue, excitement for thousands and thousands of young boys and girls."

Staff writer

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