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They'll do anything for fans By J. BRADY McCOLLOUGH How did this happen, William Hung sitting in the Buck O’Neil suite at CommunityAmerica Ballpark, wearing a T-Bones jersey over a red Hawaiian shirt? How did this happen, a former contestant on “American Idol,” known mostly for butchering a Ricky Martin song, taking in a recent baseball game in Kansas City, Kan.? The 5,200 fans don’t care how it happened, only that it did. It’s the bottom of the third inning, and the T-Bones are at bat in a scoreless game against the Edmonton Cracker-Cats. With two outs, the faces in the crowd begin looking up toward the suite above home plate, where a 23-year-old Chinese-American engineering student from California has cleared out some room and grabbed the mic. After the third out is recorded, Hung starts clapping, and the fans join in. The first song is his original title, “Just Do It.” “JUST DO IT!” Hung belts out. “BE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE. DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. IMPROVE YOURSELF AND JUST DO IT!” Thousands of people are laughing, snapping pictures with their cell phones and telling their friends, which means it’s already a successful night for Bryan Williams, the T-Bones’ director of marketing and promotions. “It’s priceless,” a young man says of Hung. “You just can’t write stuff like that.” No, see, you can. Williams does it all the time. Think “William Hung Night” is crazy? You should have seen “Redneck Weekend” in June, which encouraged fans to wear mullets and bright orange hunting gear and eat Spam and spray cheese. There was even a tire-changing contest between innings. Williams is just one in a long line of quirky minor-league baseball promoters. Every summer, small-time ballparks become circuses for a night, and they’re the ringmasters, often toeing the line between offensive and hilarious. “Minor-league baseball is entertainment,” says Becky Wallace, editor of Team Marketing Report, a monthly sports-marketing newsletter. “If you don’t want to be entertained, your best option is to either come to the game and wear headphones, or you can watch your local major-league team play from home. It’s meant to be entertainment, and teams are doing their best to make it that way.” Williams’ idea to have Hung sing at a game helped sell 2,000 tickets in a five-day span last week. That’s Williams’ job, to persuade people to choose the T-Bones over a night at the movies or the local bowling center. “You throw a party 48 times a year and hope everyone gets your sense of humor,” says Williams, 33. “All I have to do is make them laugh. It’s the easiest job in the world.” ••• Williams grew up wanting to be two things: a baseball player and a comedian. But he couldn’t hit a curveball. And for some reason, being a comedian didn’t seem practical. So he found himself taking college courses in history and political science on the path to law school. At 21, he realized that didn’t seem right. He dropped out of school to take a job as a chef — Williams had cooked since he was 6 — and he was suddenly firmly in the restaurant business, still a long way from baseball and humor. Eventually, Williams would own La Cocina del Puerco, a Mexican restaurant in Overland Park. When he arrived, La Cocina closed at 9 p.m., and its bar was going to waste. Williams opened it up late and tried to make it a niche hangout for the under-35 crowd. He bought 30 board games to create an intellectual atmosphere. All of a sudden, La Cocina was packed. Williams heard about the T-Bones in 2003 and opened up a soft-taco stand at the ballpark. It wasn’t a baseball job, but he was getting closer. He would pop into the T-Bones offices and offer up promotional ideas, quite ambitious for a taco salesman. In time, Williams couldn’t take it anymore. He marched into the office of T-Bones general manager Rick Muntean and said: “I’ll do anything. I’ll do it for free.” Muntean agreed, and Williams sold La Cocina. Muntean would test Williams. He made him work for a while as the hot-dog chef in concessions. “I gave him every rotten job in the ballpark there is to do,” Muntean said. “He was the first one to get there and the last one to leave, and he still is.” Williams watched how the T-Bones operated. He realized they needed to forge an identity with the community, which was still trying to figure out where the T-Bones fit in a town with major-league baseball. Mostly, Williams wanted to make sure the T-Bones weren’t taking themselves too seriously. Muntean couldn’t deny him any longer. He appointed Williams head of promotions before the start of the 2005 season. The days of sticking with the usual promotional fare — dollar hot dogs and fireworks nights — were numbered. “He gives us a second sentence the next day,” Muntean explains. “We went to the T-Bones game … AND WILLIAM HUNG WAS THERE.” ••• Williams could teach a class on baseball history. At age 12, he was reading Roger Angell, who made a career of writing baseball essays on baseball for The New Yorker. “I fell in love with baseball from a literary standpoint,” Williams says. His studies of the game often began and ended with Bill Veeck, the longtime owner of the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox. Veeck was known for his flamboyant publicity stunts. In 1951, Veeck’s Browns were competing with the Cardinals for fan support. Veeck’s most famous stunt was when he signed 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel to play. Gaedel batted once and wore the number “1/8” on the back of his uniform. So, Williams began his new job with an appreciation for baseball promotions. And luckily, he would have plenty of rope to work with in bringing fans to CommunityAmerica Ballpark. Independent league teams, on the fringes of pro baseball, have much more leeway with their promotions than affiliated minor-league teams and certainly clubs at the major-league level. While the Royals have hot-dog races and play the “Which hat is the ball under?” game between innings, the T-Bones fly in Hung from California to sing. Last year, Williams came up with his first gem, a promotion with Xbox and EA Sports called “The Ultimate Baseball Challenge.” The plan was big in scope. Two lucky fans, through playing against other opponents in MVP Baseball 2005 at CompUSA stores, would win the right to simulate two innings of a T-Bones-Schaumburg Flyers game in front of fans at the ballpark. After the two innings were up, the T-Bones and Flyers would take the field in the top of the third inning with the same score that the fans produced in the video game. The commissioner of the Northern League approved the promotion. But Major League Baseball, upon hearing about the promotion, put its foot down. The T-Bones, with this stunt, would be ruining the purity of baseball. The Northern League backed off, and the T-Bones were forced instead to do the promotion after the game had been played. Williams was still the winner, though. Because of the flap with MLB, the T-Bones were featured on “The Jim Rome Show” and in the pages of Sports Illustrated and The New York Times. Baseball purists are fans who will spend hour upon hour decrying anything from the designated-hitter rule to advertisements on the Green Monster at Fenway Park. The T-Bones’ Xbox idea, a promotion that would have a clear effect on the outcome of the game, had them riled up. “There is obviously a conflict between activities that may or may not influence the outcome of the game,” says Team Marketing Report’s Wallace. “The problem is, there aren’t many baseball purists left. The problem is that most people that come to a ballpark today aren’t necessarily coming for the game. They’re coming because it’s family-oriented. When you come to a game, you don’t just see baseball.” ••• It’s hard to visit an area of the country that doesn’t offer minor-league baseball these days. From Glens Falls, N.Y., to St. George, Utah, independent franchises are popping up everywhere. So how do you stand out? Among the independent teams like the T-Bones, there’s a friendly competition over which team can come up with the best promotion. There’s even an award given out yearly. Mike Veeck, son of Bill Veeck, owns several independent teams and carries on the tradition his father started over a half-century ago. His Charleston RiverDogs, St. Paul Saints and Brockton (Mass.) Rox, for which he is a consultant, are well-known for their wacky ideas. Before this season, Brockton, which plays only 92 games, challenged the Royals, who play 162, to see which team will win more games. Through Saturday, the Rox have won 24, the Royals 31. In 2004, St. Paul auctioned off an at-bat on eBay, drawing a winning bid of $5,601. A few years back in Charleston, S.C., Veeck wanted to give out a free vasectomy on Father’s Day. But the Catholic Church intervened, picketing outside the stadium, so the promotion was canceled. “The teams never want to offend their fans,” Wallace says. “Yeah, they want to target the college kids on ‘Thirsty Thursdays’ or their beer nights, but for the most part, baseball is family-oriented. They never want to push those fans away.” Williams understands that many of the promotions can be offensive, but he challenges fans to loosen up and laugh at themselves, like at Redneck Weekend. Williams sported a cut-off plaid shirt and a Burt Reynolds mustache. Wallace places the T-Bones among the top 25 teams nationally for good promotional schemes. They’ve made her list of teams to call when hunting for the outrageous. Muntean has no doubts now that he made the right hire two years ago with Williams. They were in a meeting recently, and Muntean slipped Williams a note that read, “No matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing, you always can work with me.” “The guy has idea after idea, but he follows through and pulls them off,” Muntean says. “William Hung was one of the best promotions I’ve ever seen. We put it specifically on a Monday to see if it would draw. My idea in 2004 was, ‘Let’s draw some people on a Monday night and have Pete Rose here.’ William Hung outdrew Pete Rose by a thousand.” ••• Most of Williams’ best ideas come when he’s working the late shift with one of his interns. Redneck Weekend was hatched over a six-pack of beer and bad country music. “We stayed till like 10 or 11 thinking of all the goofy stuff we could do,” says Peter Allen, the lucky intern that night who now works in ticket sales for the St. Louis Cardinals. “We fired ideas back and forth until one of us laughed hard enough, and we wrote it down.” On the night that his promotions take place, Williams is hard to keep up with. He’s constantly on his walkie-talkie, his hat on backwards, doling out orders. But when Hung, whom Williams calls “Big Williestyle,” starts singing, Williams is laughing as hard as anyone. “It’s a carnival every night,” he says. “We’re just putting on a show. And there’s a baseball game right in the middle of it.” Williams says that even the players get a kick out of his antics. On Monday, starting pitcher Greg Bicknell took more time warming up in between innings to make sure Hung could finish his songs. “We have 2½ minutes between innings, and we were running three minutes,” Williams says. “The umpire is cracking up. He’s not pitching a fit. It’s fun because the guys get it.” Williams would like to move up through the baseball ranks eventually. But for now, he’s just enjoying being in his element. “It took me 30 years to find a way in,” Williams
says. “They’re going to have to drag me out of here.” EXTRAS: Upcoming T-Bones promotions AUG. 1: The Un-Olympics. The T-Bones will make Athens mourn with the “world’s fastest fat man” and “how many Oreos can you fit in your mouth” contests. AUG. 13: Elvis Night. The T-Bones are three days early for the anniversary of Elvis’ death, but they’ll honor him anyway. AUG. 22: World’s Worst Giveaway. The T-Bones are giving out “front-office trading cards,” which will portray team officials, grounds crew and cleaning crew on baseball cards. They’ll all be available for autographs. AUG. 25: Fan Sponsorship Day. Always wanted a plaque with your name on it? If you give a few bucks to charity, you can name anything — and they mean anything — at CommunityAmerica Ballpark after yourself. They’ll announce it over the loudspeaker and put a sign on it to make it official. Most outrageous minor-league baseball promotions 10. The Nashua (N.H.) Pride commemorated the 32nd anniversary of Watergate by giving out 1,000 Richard Nixon bobbleheads. Anyone named Woodward or Bernstein got in free. 9. The Charleston RiverDogs tried to play the quietest game ever on “Silent Night” in 2003. There was no talking for the first five innings, and fans wore duct tape over their mouths. Fans held posters that said “YEAH!,” “BOO!” and “HEY, BEER MAN!” 8. This season, the Southwest Michigan Devil Rays sent three lucky fans home with their own grounds crew. The Devil Rays sent their grounds crew to the winners’ houses to cut the lawn, weed the garden and take care of the driveway. 7. At the Altoona Curve’s annual “Awful Night” this season, the Curve strove once again to do everything to make the experience for fans as awful as possible. They sold bottomless beer cups. Fans could purchase the bottom for 13 cents. 6. On “Pre-planned Funeral Night,” the Hagerstown Suns gave away a full prepaid funeral valued at $6,500. Two thousand fans entered the contest. 5. This year, the Western Michigan Whitecaps held a $1,000 cash drop from a helicopter for kids ages 5-12. Unfortunately, the stunt backfired, as two 7-year-olds were injured in the mad rush for cash and had to go to the hospital. 4. The Charleston RiverDogs had Tonya Harding Mini Bat Night, which commemorated “the incident” with fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan by handing out bats. 3. The RiverDogs hit the jackpot again with “Nobody Night” in 2002. Trying to set the record for professional baseball’s lowest attendance (zero), fans were locked out of a RiverDogs game until the fifth inning, when it became official. 2. Several teams have tried over the years to give out a free vasectomy on Father’s Day. But the Catholic Church always intervenes, and the event has never actually come to fruition. 1. The Bisbee- Douglas Copper Kings took advantage of baseball legend Ted Williams’ body being cryogenically frozen in 2003 by giving out frozen popsicles to the first 500 fans.
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J. Brady McCollough - jbrady@coveringsports.com (email) - 816-868-2621 (cell) |
