We lost to a Cave Shrimp?

Un....believeable.

If there's one lesson that can be learned from MiLB.com's "Promotion of the Year" voting, it's this: Do not doubt the power of the Cave Shrimp. This little-known sightless crustacean was the centerpiece of the Bowling Green Hot Rod's "What Could've Been Night," which swam past the competition en route to being named the best promotion of 2009.

"What Could've Been Night" received 11,945 votes, more than the combined total of the nine other nominees. The only other team to even come close to the Hot Rods' lofty numbers was the Fresno Grizzlies, who received 9,489 votes.

Lofty.

I will give our new MWL brethern credit for this stuff, though.

"As a first-season team, we had so much work to do," Hot Rods general manager Brad Taylor said when asked how "What Could've Been Night" came to be. "It got to the point in January and February where we were holding creative idea meetings from 6-9 on Thursday nights. ... It was a chance to put on your favorite T-shirt and hang out in a big room, just throw some ideas out there, no holds barred. So it was then that the seed was planted, and from there it steamrolled into a whole bunch of other stuff."

The "other stuff" was all over the map as the team's production staff created a diverse array of "What Could've Been" videos. Sports was a logical topic to explore (what if the Titans had won Super Bowl XXXIV? Or if Kentucky had defeated Duke in the 1992 NCAA basketball championship?), but the team also dealt with some far less likely scenarios. Some standouts: What could've been if Brooks and Dunn had chosen different singing partners? Or if Roseanne had been blessed with a beautiful singing voice? Or, most ridiculously, if fainting was a competitive event?

But at the evening's core was, of course, the Cave Shrimp.

As it always should be...I guess. But, we, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, stand by our Salute to Cows Night