Dear Allan Benavides: [General Manager; Eugene Emeralds]:
Once again, I have come up with a solution to your most current, pressing problem: the fact that PK Park is double booked for Opening Night. It is simple, really. Find yourself an empty field and dub the home opener “Sandlot Night”. Throw some bases down and give your elite front office staff a shovel so they can build a pitcher’s mound, and BOOM, you have a ballgame with pastoral roots. Maybe this field can even be in a fancy place called a park where there are public restrooms.
I know you are thinking, “Jesus Christ, Bads85! How am I going to make money off this! Where will the fans sit? I am going to have to rent bleachers.” Trust your good friend Bads85 here. Through clever marketing, we are going to have fans pay five to ten dollars to bring their own chairs and blankets to sit on this field — except for my close friends coming to the game. They get on the field free, real close to the kegs.
You might be thinking, “How in the hell are we going to have concessions in a sandlot?” Well, Allan, the baseball gods invented food and beer trucks just for this reason. We just have to hope it does not rain. We are going to grill some meat though. The Emeralds have not sold a goddamn hot dog since August, 2019. Chris Bowers [Director of Corporate Events] and Turner “No Nepotism Here” Elmore [Director pf Food and Beverage] can put on aprons, fire up some coals, and prepare fresh hotdogs the way the Good Lord intended — with lots of lighter fluid! Maybe Joe Hudson {General Manager; Inland Empire 66ers] can make the trip to “supervise”.
I am sure you are screaming, “Do you know how many city health codes we would be breaking?”, and I assure you I do, and I am just getting warmed up. Health codes are made to be broken so government bureaucrats can justify their existence. Remember, in this profession, it is almost always better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. We are first time offenders (except for fireworks’ violations). Even if they do fine us, think of the national publicity.
Did I mention we are going to have kegs behind first and third base? We can charge $5 bucks for a cold draft beer in a red solo cup. We can give a dollar from each beer to a charity, and everyone will love us. My god, man, we are going to win ALL THE GOLDEN BOBBLEHEADS on the first evening of the season. We will be the little former Short Season team forced to High A without a stadium that cheered in the face of adversity instead of wallowing in despair. We will become media darlings.
Now being the smart guy you are, you probably have looked into something like this while you looked for an alternate field, but you might have overlooked the Sandlot Night angle. Even if the game is being played at Sheldon Spots Complex or North Eugene High School, we market the game as a sandlot game. Show the movie! Invite Denis Leary and Patrick Renna (the fat kid who was the catcher). Promise a return to what baseball used to be. Offer the opportunity to have father/sons daughters/mothers “have” a catch. Maybe have some skeletons with scythes amble into the outfield from a cornfield to scare the shit out of people to keep the mood light. Pretend we are having a Kentucky Derby— wait, we do not do that here. Ever. Goddammit, if the NCAA is going to make us eat a bucket of shit on the season opener, let’s make money off it. If the league shuts us down before we sell any tickets (and we know damn well they will), we can turn this into a publicity bonanza.
Hey, what is possibility of me getting an Ems’ email address? You might find this hard to believe, but some MiLB executives do not take my AOL.com email address seriously. You don’t know it yet, but Chris Bowers and I decided you needed an assistant, and I was just the guy. Actually, Chris does not know that yet either, but I am going to write him next to inform him what he should think. Giving me that an Ems email will give me CLOUT, and I would only use it for official Emeralds business.
Your friend in baseball,
Bads85
Dead Religions 