When Good Promotions Go Bad

Remember the first time you watched Bull Durham?

Or, how about the 100th time you watched it? Mixed into the main story of Crash, Nuke, and Annie Savoy were some of the neat things that go on at games around the minor leagues.

There was the wedding at home plate. I've seen a few of those.

There is the Independence Day celebration

This Independence Day:

Not, this one:

Then, there is the chopper ca$h drop. Our friends in West Michigan tried to copy the harmless looking promotion from Bull Durham. It didn't work out the way it did in the movie.

From the Detroit Free Press article:

Two children were injured Saturday in a scramble to grab money dropped from
a helicopter as part of a promotion following a West Michigan Whitecaps
game.

About $1,000 in cash, including two $100 bills, was dropped Saturday from
the helicopter over Fifth Third Ballpark's outfield in Comstock Park as children
lined the outfield fence, nearly from foul pole to foul pole.

After the cash was dropped, the children scrambled. A 7-year-old boy was
trampled and taken to a hospital, while a 7-year-old girl got a bloody lip after
being pushed onto the ground, the Grand Rapids Press reported.

The guys at Deadspin have a take on this:

And the team is being really sympathetic about it, too. “It’s for fun and games,” said a team spokeswoman. “This is why we have everybody sign a waiver.”

See? There is a happy ending. The team isn’t liable, so everything’s okay. Next month, team plans to drop children into a tank full of live sharks, but it’s OK, because they’ll have them sign a
waiver.

I know the people in the Whitecap front office. They are very good at what they do. I am sure that they are horrified at what happened and are doing everything that they can to make things right.

We have had a few scary moments here with in game promotions. Once, our mascot Fang got tangled up with a young girl during a race around the bases and the girl fell hard at second. She was alright, more scared than anything else.

It is rare for a promotion to go as poorly as it did in Grand Rapids. But, when it does, you never want to try anything again for fear of something like that happening.

This is the thing about the minor leagues. You can try something and it can make national news in a good way...Like when the Whitecaps had an elephant throw out the first pitch for a game.


Or, you get what happened on Saturday at Fifth Third Ballpark.

The things that go right at every stadium in the minors outnumber the bad.