Grasshoppers Vs. Suns – July 31

Minor League Baseball certainly provides good value for your entertainment dollar. Ticket prices and parking are very reasonable and while concessions seem to steadily increase in price every year (especially for beer), the overall expense is worth it (especially if you enjoy baseball).

The quality of the play of course depends on the classification and one of the better gauges of that is the quality of the defense played. Having attended probably 50-60 AAA games at the DBAP, it is my experience that it is almost impossible (for me at least) to distinguish between the quality of defense played in AAA and in the Major Leagues – they are that good. In the game I attended in July, there were 5 or 6 superb plays that were made to look almost too easy.

On the other hand, the South Atlantic League game I attended at the NewBridge Bank Park in Greensboro between the Grasshoppers and the Hagerstown Suns was at the other end of the spectrum. Affected by wet conditions, you could tell that this was a “Low A” league, not so much by the physical errors (there were plenty of those) as by the mental errors – missed cutoff men, misjudged line drives, ill-advised throws when the fielder should have eaten the ball. This certainly didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the game, but it did provide a stark contrast.

Regardless of classification, Minor League Baseball is more about the stuff that happens outside of the actual game play. There are no secrets in this business and all of the teams seem to leverage the same formula:

• 6 or 7 cheesy between-innings contests usually featuring some corporate-sponsored theme or prizes. These can be mildly entertaining especially when some alcohol is involved (on the part of the participants or the viewers).
• One of these contests is usually a sumo-wrestling contest that always goes 3 rounds, with the contestants splitting the first two rounds (fixed) and the final round actually being the only real deal.
• Music played before all batters. (Every home team batter has his theme music nowadays with the advent of digital music PA systems.)
• T-shirts and/or hot dogs shot into the stands.
• Where possible, dogs and mascots are incorporated into the contests.
• Some sort of race, like the Pirogues Race in Pittsburgh or the Presidents Race at National Park.
• Tying all of this non-baseball stuff together is usually a high energy, clean cut, MC kid, who yucks it up for three hours with the patrons and the “families with kids” that are the target market for all of this stuff.

I’ve found that in the lower classifications (especially the South Atlantic League), the teams seem to push the envelope a bit more on this stuff. The Grasshoppers didn’t disappoint.

In Greensboro, for example, they have this dog that takes the place of the bat boy during a couple of the innings. The dog actually retrieves the bat (like a big bone) from the field of play. When we first saw that, both Chris and I harkened back to the 2002 World Series when Dusty Baker’s 3 1/2 year old bat boy son almost got rolled over in a play at the plate in Game 5. We came to the conclusion that hopefully there is a human that controls when that dog is released to retrieve the bat.

Several years ago, window and windshield repair companies started “sponsoring” foul balls that crash into the stands or luxury boxes. Cue the crashing window sound with a plug for Joe’s Windshield Repair. Greensboro had this covered, but also would pipe in music every time a pitcher threw to first base to keep a runner close. Cue music for “Somebody’s Watching Me” from the GEICO commercial. Can’t believe some security company won’t eventually sponsor that. “This throw to first base sponsored by ADT Security, your security solution in the Triad.”

For the race, the ‘Hoppers have this sausage race sponsored by local favorite Neese's Sausage. In this race, Hot Sausage came out of nowhere to win the race, but was disqualified (maybe for PEDs, I don’t know).

The Grasshoppers MC Host is a dude named Spaz, pretty much a prototypical Minor League Baseball MC host. They have this strikeout victim promotion. A couple of times during the game, an opposing batter is chosen – if he strikes out, the patrons get a coupon for a free order of fries from, get this, Sheetz. So while that batter is up, Spaz leads one side of the park in yelling Fry, while the other side yells Guy. WTF? Well this Altoona kid found it amusing that little old Sheetz is now such a big-time player in the North Carolina Piedmont.

The Grasshoppers do something that I had never seen done before. For selected opposing batters, they poke fun at the batter by superimposing (on the video board) a picture that puns the player’s name with some pop culture figure. The player’s stats are preserved – and his theme music is played.

Outfielder Destin Hood from Hagerstown was greeted with this image, accompanied by the theme from Robin Hood Men In Tights. The obvious pop culture figure for infielder Stephen King was his namesake, the famous horror novel writer from New England. When infielder Rick Hague came to the plate, he was greeted with Super Freak and this image on the video board.

LMAO. I am not sure what I think about this. It sort of feels over the line, comic-bookish, and childish. But this is the minor leagues.

The Grasshoppers ended up winning 5-4. Part of me was sort of hoping that Hague would come to bat in the 9th with the tying run on base, go yard, and then, as he touched home plate, sprint into the stands, grab the mike from Spaz, and yell….

I’m Rick Hague, bitch!

Here is a Flickr slideshow of some shots taken at NewBridge Bank Park in downtown Greensboro.