James' Third Base

Usually when I think of third base, two things come to mind: baseball and the backseat of my car in high school. On a day when Josh was working hard in college, I had a a meeting at my accountant's office. On the way back home I discovered another kind of third base as I slid into James' Third Base Sports Bar and Grill.

Located at 1079 Reading Rd. in Mason, Third Base lives up to its name, at least in terms of the decor. It is you typical sports pub with TVs playing all of the available sports channels. They see themselves as much a neighborhood casual restaurant as a sports pub and do their best to combine the two. The menu is fairly extensive compared to many similar places. They offer a fairly wide selection of sandwiches, salads and wraps to compliment the traditional bar food appetizers.

But I was there for the burger. The lunch menu (when I was there) only offers a single steak burger but at dinner time you can get the double and even a triple. I settled for the single with American and a light run through the garden.

When you call your burger a steak burger the diner just assumes that the meat is ground sirloin. I'm not sure what it was but mine didn't really have that sirloin flavor. It was well cooked and fresh but tasted more like an 80-20 ground beef that had been slapped together. In short, there was nothing special about it. And at $7.49 ($8.49 at dinner time) it seemed a tad over priced, especially when I could have driven a couple miles and eaten at a Five Guys.

Don't get me wrong, Third Base is a decent place. I'm sure during peak sports times the place is rocking and folks have a great time. Perhaps I was anticipating more from what was called a steak burger (shoot, this wasn't even Steak N Shake quality) but I left disappointed and wondering why my money really went. It was kind of like leading off the inning with a stand-up triple and being stranded when my teammates couldn't get the ball out of the infield. Oh well. There's always next season.