"He said, 'You're right about the subs. We'll start doing that,' " McCloy recalls. "I thought, 'Wow.' That was really reinforcing for me because I realized all I had to do was call and now all these people can have a veggie sub.
"That kind of got me going."
Through research, she found that no big league stadium offered veggie dogs. Encouraged by vegetarians and animal-rights supporters, she launched a website, soyhappy.org, and started lobbying concession managers.
"I just thought it needed to happen because there was a certain percentage of the fan base at any given stadium that probably would not be eating at all, would bring their own food or would resort to eating only peanuts," McCloy says. "It seemed like it made good business sense. It never dawned on me that it would take off like it did. I got this following -- it was bizarre -- and I went with it."
As an actress who says her main claim to fame was a guest spot on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" -- "I was one of only two women who made out with Worf in seven seasons," she says -- McCloy was used to unconventional followings.
But this was different.
The Chicago White Sox were the first big league team to offer veggie dogs, McCloy says, and 14 more followed, among them the Giants.
"She's such a good advocate that she sort of makes it competitive between ballparks, which is cool," says Sandie Filipiak, director of concessions at AT&T Park. "It's like, 'Who's got the most vegetarian choices?' "
Through her efforts, McCloy has developed an unexpected affinity for baseball and, since her move to Berkeley in 2002, the Oakland A's.
"I've never become like a huge, avid, have-to-read-about-it-everyday kind of fan," she says, "but I really enjoy it. And I love everything about the A's. I love what they represent. I like rooting for the underdog."
She says she's drawn to the A's pluck and resourcefulness, two attributes that could be ascribed to McCloy in her nonprofit, uphill endeavor.
"I'm pretty proud of it," notes McCloy, who says she cried in 2001 when she bit into the first veggie dog served at Dodger Stadium. "I didn't realize what a big deal it was going to be, and then when I realized that it was, at first I was kind of embarrassed. But then I realized it truly was important to a lot of people and then I thought about the big picture and how this was kind of a revolution."
Will it end with veggie dogs in every stadium?
"Absolutely," McCloy says. "I think it's inevitable."
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jerome.crowe@latimes.com
