Each year on Independence Day, Loyal Scaiaholics know I look forward to the Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest at Curly’s Frozen Custard in Fort Worth.

When Curly’s started serving Nathan’s nine years ago, their public relations guy called Nathan and asked for his blessing to host a contest. They were planning to start serving the hot dogs on the Fourth of July, after all.

Bourke Harvey, the owner of Curly’s, had to change the rules from Coney Island to get Nathan’s approval. Everyone eats a fixed number of hot dogs as quickly as possible instead of eating as many as they can in a given amount of time.

In 2015, they introduced a celebrity heat. I competed along with Denise Harris. I was still working at WBAP at the time. She was at the Star-Telegram.

She took the celebrity division that first year, but we’ve matched each others’ moves since then: We’ve both been fired and showed back up working for different outfits last year.

This year, though, Denise reported she couldn’t attend. Something about being consumed by fear. Or she was going out of town. One of the two.

Last year, a reporter from WFAA showed up for the first time and bested everyone.

He came back this year, and you could tell he hasn’t let up on his training, taking the trophy again.

Back in ’15, neither Denise nor I even finished. Harvey explained that another change he made is his Nathan’s hot dogs are 1/2 pound instead of 1/4 pound. We both sat there with four half-eaten hot dogs in front of us, so they ended it and declared her the winner because she had eaten slightly more than me.

From then on, we got one hot dog each year, with Harvey dumbing down the competition for our sake.

This year, I took second to WFAA’s Sean Giggy in the celebrity heat, but my time was 2:12, up from 1:49. I finished first in the radio division, though, so I’ve got another trophy to add to the collection.

All of those links from previous hot dog contests indicate I’ve been envisioning a Rocky scenario where I’d show up this year and burst back into championship form. I may have gone the opposite direction on that one.

The trophy may say I’m the runner-up, but Curly’s sent me away with a tub of Parker County Peach frozen custard to take to a cookout later, so my associates and I are the real winners.

Congratulations to Sean Giggy. I’ll keep training, though. I’m a bulldozer. An Italian bulldozer.