If you’re in the stands at Dodger Stadium this weekend for the National League division series, you might hear the booming voice of Robert Sanchez, a.k.a. Pnutman.
He's been scrambling up and down the stairs of Dodger Stadium for the last 50 years, making a name for himself selling peanuts, cotton candy, and beer. You name it, and Pnutman has sold it. He’s even become a bit of a local celebrity.
His journey started, of all things, with bowling. He was obsessed with it when growing up in Lincoln Heights. After school, Sanchez would hit up his mom for bowling money. But one day, the well went dry.
“She got tired of giving me money for bowling,” remembers Sanchez. “She said, ‘You got to go get a job.’”
A friend of his worked at Dodger Stadium and said he could probably get a job there too. So Sanchez went. “The boss said, ‘Put on a clean shirt, tie. Comb your hair, get up here.’ And I started walking the stairs.”
The first time he walked into Dodger Stadium was 1974. He was 16 years old and had never been to a game before.
“It was wild. Wow. The big capital. W-O-W. And to this day, it's still wow. It's a beautiful stadium.”
Sanchez learned that there is a hierarchy among stadium vendors. The ones who have been there the longest get to pick what section they work and what product they sell.
As a newcomer, Sanchez sold Tab soda. “I outsold the Coca-Cola guys and everybody else with the shittiest pdoduct. They called me Hustler.”
Sanchez went back for another season, then another. But it was a part-time job, and he didn’t make enough to support a family.
Eventually he became a carpenter for the Los Angeles Unified School District. One day in March 1994, he was called out to a job that changed his life. A door to a kindergarten classroom was broken.
“I was a teacher there, and he walked in to fix my door,” remembers Terry Sanchez. “And that's how we met.”
Robert kept finding reasons to come back to Terry’s room. She says soon they started going out on dates. Two years later, they were married. “I'm a lucky guy. It's a great tag team, and I couldn't do without her,” he shares.
Robert and Terry Sanchez are in their home in Duerte. Photo by David Weinberg.
The couple has been together for 29 years, and his wife loves that he works at the stadium. “It's my little break away from him. He's a little bit loud sometimes. People say, ‘Is he hard of hearing?’ I go, ‘No, that's just the way he is. He just likes to be loud.’”
Over the years, Sanchez climbed his way up to selling the holy grail of stadium food: peanuts. “Peanuts were the No. 1 seller. Hands down. Everybody wanted peanuts, back then I was selling tons of peanuts. Nobody came close.”
He loved the job, feeding off the crowd’s energy and becoming one of the more exuberant vendors. He became Pnutman — and even got a vanity license plate showing that word.
He also developed his own catchphrase. “What the hell, right? It's just my slogan. I said it and kind of stuck.”
Robert Sanchez earned the Vendor All-Star Award in 1998. Photo by David Weinberg.
On a recent Thursday night, the Dodgers were playing the Milwaukee Brewers. Sanchez was working the bleachers. As an old timer, he gets to choose where he works. Typically he picks field level and the bleachers. And even though he still goes by the name Pnutman, Sanchez is now a pizza man. These days, that’s where the money is.
“You follow the money. We make a percentage, and pizza is almost $18. Everybody eats pizza. And pizza you can share. You got kids. You shut two kids up at one time.”
There have been a lot of highlights in Pnutman’s career. Like the time he tried to catch a home run and injured his hand. “When Corey Seager hit his first home run, I heard the crack of the bat and I looked up, and about 10 feet above my head was the ball coming. I put my hand up. It hit my hand. My hand was purple-blue-green for two weeks.”
There are hazards lurking at every corner. “I've stepped on a hot dog that slides from under you, and I slipped on nacho cheese. It happens. You're going to take your hits.”
Plus, “there's always knuckleheads, in any sport, you're going to have knuckleheads.”
Sanchez says he’s learned to not let harassment get to him. “It's got to go in one ear and out the other because we're out there alone. You get two or three people to say you were being disrespectful or anything negative, you will lose your job in a heartbeat.”
Sanchez has mastered the art of what he calls sticking and moving. “They're paying me to exercise up there. I'm averaging 15,000 steps a game, six miles a game. So as time moves on, I'm still there.”
This season is Sanchez’s 50th at Dodger Stadium. He’s 65 years old, retired from carpentry. But he says he’s good with walking the aisles as Pnutman for another 10 years.