{"id":199586,"date":"2026-05-22T05:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T05:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/199586\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T05:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T05:31:07","slug":"competitive-eater-joey-chestnut-faces-probation-ahead-of-visit-to-reading-reading-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/199586\/","title":{"rendered":"Competitive eater Joey Chestnut faces probation ahead of visit to Reading | Reading Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

READING, Pa. \u2013 America’s best-known competitive eater is on probation ahead of a visit to Reading.<\/p>\n

Joey Chestnut pleaded guilty to two counts of battery.<\/p>\n

It stems from an incident in March at a suburban Indianapolis restaurant.<\/p>\n

Chestnut admitted to slapping a man who recognized him and tried to shake his hand.<\/p>\n

He told police he was drunk at the time and he doesn’t remember doing it.<\/p>\n

The six month probation will not prevent Chestnut from competing in the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest on July Fourth.<\/p>\n

He’ll be in Baseballtown next weekend on Saturday, May 30, to take part in a pre-game eating challenge at 6 p.m. According to the Reading Fightin Phils,<\/a> Chestnut will be eating the team\u2019s famous cheeseburger dogs (a unique cheeseburger shaped like a hot dog and served on a hot dog roll).<\/p>\n

Fans will have the opportunity to purchase a VIP meet-and-greet package, which includes a limited-edition Joey Chestnut bobblehead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 America’s best-known competitive eater is on probation ahead of a visit to Reading. Joey Chestnut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[88457,58038,58041,736,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-199586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-competitive-eating","tag-joey-chestnut","tag-nathan","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}