PITTSBURGH, PA. - Earlier today, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes, the 2025 Cy Young Award winner, served hot dogs at a Sheetz convenience store (Sheetz, which has 830 locations nationwide, is the marquee sponsor of the Pittsburgh Pirates). For years, that bewildered me. Every major media outlet in Pittsburgh ran a story on Paul Skenes serving hot dogs nicknamed the “Big Glizzy.”
Under new ownership, the Post-Gazette wrote a piece describing his online influencer strategies as innovative. Evan Ryan Deto at the news startup Axios Pittsburgh wrote a breathless review that looked like it had been hastily rewritten by Sheetz.
“The intrigue,” wrote Axios’ Ryan Deto, “The new menu item is inspired by glizzy, online slang for a hot dog, and Skenes said its massive size won’t leave you wanting more.”
Ironically, at only 9 inches, the hot dog isn’t even as big as your generic foot-long dog. But to Sheetz, “size doesn’t matter,.” What matters is that Skenes and his girlfriend, Livvy Dunne, have a combined 18 million followers on Instagram and Tik Tok.
Given the parasocial obsession that millions of very young and very white people have with the Skenes and Dunne relationship, any media outlet that writes about them naturally gets insane traffic. Much like the hot dogs they are covering, these stories are empty calorie news for a city that needs to be asking tough questions about how Paul Skenes exploited his influencer status to push Trump’s war on Iran.
Meanwhile, Payday Report has been alone in asking tough questions of the viral superstar pitcher’s disturbing pro-war views, while the local Pittsburgh press is too busy writing about hot dogs.
Payday Report doesn’t write about hot dogs. Instead, we write about real “beefs” that affect people’s lives and you can do that even while reporting on sports figures that entertain people without selling shitty hot dogs… So, if you can, please give us a few bucks to tell the stories that most aren’t telling.
Check out our expose (below) on how Trump has used Skenes to push the war with Iran.
Check out our expose (below) on how Trump has used Skenes to push the war with Iran.
Trump Uses Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes Meme to Promote Bombing Iran & “American Dominance”
By Mike Elk
March 6,2026
Pure American dominance. 💥🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/nvgWLar2ak
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026
On Friday, the Trump White House tweeted a video featuring legendary, home run-hitting baseball players, including Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Alex Rodriguez. After each play hit a home run, the Trump White House inserted a video of an Iranian target being bombed.
Written above the Trump Administration’s video of home runs and Iranian bombing was the phrase "Pure American Dominance.” Trump’s video plays off the quotes given by Pittsburgh Pirates Paul Skenes, winner of the 2025 NL Cy Young Award, who said earlier this week that "We’re America, we’ve got to assert our dominance over everybody else.”
With Skenes, who attended the Air Force Academy before transferring to LSU, set to pitch for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, the quote went viral on Fox News. It became a meme after it was widely circulated by Skene’s Trump-supporting girlfriend, Livvy Dunne, a former star Louisiana State gymnast, who has over 10 million followers on social media.
Recently, Skenes and Dunne made headlines as they watched the national championship football game between LSU and Indiana with Donald Trump. On Friday, as Team USA kicked off its first game of the World Baseball Classic against Brasil, Trump tweeted out a video about American dominance that equated winning baseball games with bombing Iran.
Paul Skenes and his girlfriend, Olivia Dunne, who’ve supported Trump
Many baseball fans have called out Skenes for his militaristic statements. However, Skenes has remained unapologetic in his support for the U.S.’s bombing of Iran.
Earlier this week, Skenes doubled down on his statements in an interview with The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal.
“We’re doing it to represent the men and women that are fighting for us, along with many other things that make this country the greatest country in the world,” Skenes told The Athletic.
The 23-year-old pitcher then claimed that Americans don’t respect the U.S. military enough.
“This is the greatest country in the world. That’s what I believe. That’s why I wanted to serve, why I went to the Air Force Academy. And those folks don’t get the recognition they deserve,” Skenes told The Athletic.
By Friday afternoon, the Trump White House was playing off of the social media energy about the World Baseball Classic by promoting Skene’s words about baseball representing American dominance to associate hitting home runs with bombing Iran.
Bob Ross, a local Pittsburgh baseball writer, was dismayed by the tweet and sent it to me. For more than a decade, Ross, who teaches social justice at Point Park University, has written against “sportswashing,” the practice where politicians like Trump use sports to push right-wing policies.
“It just makes me kind of sick,” Ross told me earlier in the week. “He’s standing by his words before, that America should dominate the rest of the world, and it’s just disgusting, because at the end of the day, this isn’t a game, this is people’s lives and deaths that we’re talking about.”
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