Sausagegate 2007

Meet the Klement’s racing sausages of Brewers Stadium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  #1 is the Bratwurst, #2 the Polish Sausage, #3 is the Italian Sausage, #4 is the Hot Dog, and #5 is of course the Chorizo as you might have guessed from that stylin’ sombrero.  During the seventh inning at Brewers Stadium, the Klement’s sausages race in their gigantic foam costumes from the dug out and sprint around the warning track to first base.  It is ridiculous.

But during Sausagegate 2007, Randall Simon of the Pittsburg Pirates took the competition a bit too far.  As Italian and Polish ran past his team’s dugout, he hit Italian in the head, knocking her down, and Polish tripped over her.  There was chaos on the track and in the field, which ultimately led to an arrest and three-game suspension for Simon.  The horror.

Simon did make an official, public apology to Mandy Block, a.k.a Italian Sausage.  She only asked that the offending bat be autographed and given to her, and the player obliged.

But that wasn’t enough for Curaçao, Simon’s home island.  The Curaçao Tourism Board offered her a complimentary trip to clear the reputation of the Caribbean island once and for all.

Thankfully, Sausagegate was settled peacefully, and everyone involved has been able to move on.

When Baseball Went to the Future … and Thank God it Came Back!

Many people might not remember this, and I’m sure most baseball fans would love to forget it, but during the 1999 pre-Millenial crazy, the MLB went futuristic with their “Turn Ahead the Clock Promotion.”  20 big league teams wore “futuristic” jerseys over the course of 14 games during the summer of 1999. The bizarre uniforms from the future were roundly ridiculed at the time, have been ridiculed ever since, and will likely continue to be ridiculed long past the year 2021, which is the year they supposedly represented (a year chosen because the series was sponsored by Century 21!).

In case you didn’t know, in the future every logo will be bigger, all materials will be shinier, and shirts will be worn with shorter wing-like sleeves …

But this horrible flop of an idea was inspired by a relatively successful promotional night held in 1998 at the Kingdome in Seattle.  The Mariners’ marketing director at the time, Kevin Martinez, dreamt up a game from the year 2027 to be played between the Mariners and the Royals.  He went to an in-house designer with the directive to create something futuristic – “We want [the uniforms] to be vests, we want them to be shiny, we want them to look tech-y — and now you get to tell us what we mean by that … we weren’t going to use a unitard or anything else that might be so different that it would put our players at a competitive disadvantage .”  They brought Ken Griffey Jr. on board to spearhead the idea and he really ran with it – he decided the jerseys looked better untucked (a highly controversial decision), the team was going to play with their caps backward, and Griffey brought a couple of cans of silver spray paint to the park with him and spray-painted his teammates’ shoes and some of their gloves!

But the uniforms were just part of the story that night in Seattle. In order to provide the proper context, Martinez and his team also made some adjustments inside the Kingdome — or, rather, the Biodome, as it was renamed for the evening.  The ball for the ceremonial first pitch was delivered to the mound by a robot, the first pitch was thrown by James Doohan, who played Scotty on “Star Trek” who made his way onto the field in a DeLorean, the Pluto Mighty Pups, the Saturn Rings and the Mercury Fire (teams of the intergalactic future) were added to the standings banners, and the Mariners borrowed the Astros’ mascot, Orbit, for the game!

What a wacky idea gone way too far!

Cracker Jack Prizes Are Lame…

Once upon a time, in 1893 on the eve of the Chicago World’s Fair, Frederick William Rueckheim and his brother Louis, dreamt of a million dollar idea – “candied popcorn and peanuts” – a.k.a. Cracker Jacks.  The first junk food.  It wasn’t until 1912 that the company began to include the now infamous prizes in each box.  Now these little bonuses were always small, and generally useless, but at least they used to be arguably cool (kind of). Whereas Cracker Jacks once offered decoder rings, metal charms, and spinning tops, the prizes are now ridiculously lame -  a small fold-and-tear comic or paper device as its prize, some of which are even meant to be (gasp) educational.   Here is a look at the lame and the lamer from then to now…