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Annoying: Some minor-league baseball teams go overboard with sideshow "entertainment"
Journal File Photo
The Winston-Salem Dash employs something called “Bolt” as its official mascot.
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Published: July 2, 2009
In early evening, as the slanting sunlight brightens the still-clean fielders' uniforms, the public-address system interrupts this bucolic baseball moment for a message, delivered in the irritating sing-song chant of a cartoon: "Every-body clap your hands…."
A few fans, mostly children, join the fast-paced mechanical clap.
Two hours later, as dull darkness falls over the earth-moving equipment behind the left-field wall, the public-address system repeats the message: "Every-body clap your hands…."
Fewer fans, almost all children, clap along. The claps barely budge the noise meter, mainly because the lethargic Monday crowd is so small (449 announced, 172 bodies visible, not counting players). The episode comes from Winston-Salem's only functioning pro ballpark, the remnants of Ernie Shore Field under a Wake Forest nameplate, but you can hear the same message at Greensboro's downtown ballpark and in minor-league settings across the land.
Somewhere between corn-lined fields of dreams and Baseball Marketing 201, the promoters developed a script that dumbs down the event to a level a 4-year-old can understand. Anyone older than 4 or anyone remotely tired of playing Simon Says should bring a Blackberry.
The hand-clapping command joins those "Make Some Noise" scoreboard prompts at college games and reflects an obvious decline in national intelligence. Only a few years ago, fans knew when to clap and when to observe the players in front of them. Now, the management machine tells them how to act.
Observation and contemplation -- the essence of baseball's mental game -- count for less now because the game counts for less. Promoters sell the entertainment experience, no matter how lame that experience seems when customers participate in stupid games involving toilet seats or oversized fly swatters.
Fans walk in circles around a bat until they feel drunk, then stagger around and fall down. Or they wear inflated plastic suits and pounce on each other like doughboy wrestlers. Baseball becomes the backdrop for a carnival, and the ballpark becomes a theme park with coincidental competition between the lines.
This is true all over. It's also understandable, up to a point. The owners often love baseball but need to make money. They add playgrounds and childish games and interactive announcements. It worked for Pee-wee Herman, and on the whole it must work for minor-league baseball. Almost every team uses the same template, cramming the sideshow games between half-innings and seldom illuminating the actual game.
John Hopkins, president of the high Class A Carolina League, said that minor-league owners and executives regularly attend seminars emphasizing business practices. Sometimes the seminars involve other sports.
"There's always a sharing and a copying of ideas," Hopkins said. "There are no new ideas. Chances are that when you see something, it has been done somewhere else before."
How much is too much?
Over time, baseball owners have relied on special promotions drawing customers to ballparks, especially those parks occupied by sleepy teams. But there are degrees to everything. The Winston-Salem Dash -- or whatever they call the team when it eventually moves into the new Peters Creek ballpark -- will decide whether to elevate baseball over playpen stuff, like Class AAA Durham does, or turn baseball into a blaring variety-show vehicle, like low Class A Greensboro does.
The Durham Bulls rose to national prominence in the movies, and then they moved from quirky old Durham Athletic Park into the stylishly modern Durham Bulls Athletic Park down the street.
They retained the gigantic bull grazing above the left-field wall, which is called the Blue Monster. Whenever a Durham player hits a homer, the metal bull's eyes turn red and smoke spurts out of its nostrils. For sluggers, the new deal is the same old steakhouse deal: Hit Bull, Win Steak; Hit Grass, Win Salad.
Tampa Bay's top farm team has a mascot to complement the sign. Wool E. Bull walks on the dugout roof, cavorts with squealing children and drives a go-kart around the warming track like Kyle Busch on caffeine. But Wool E. Bull recognizes certain limits and doesn't hog the spotlight. The Bulls offer a smattering of between-innings promotional stunts but generally stay out of baseball's way.
Greensboro, on the other hand, jams every promo game imaginable between innings. A carny barker chatters away or turns the microphone over to a curious fellow in a Medieval cap nicknamed Spaz, the human sidekick of Guilford the Grasshopper and the owner's equipment-retrieving dogs (Miss Babe Ruth and Master Yogi Berra).
It gets rather crowded between the third-base line and the grandstands. It also gets crowded between the ears whenever the disembodied P.A. voice engages fans in mindless repeat-after-me noises between pitches. You heard that right: between pitches.
Hopkins, who runs Winston-Salem's league, has seen the sideshow spectrum.
"It's a matter of taste on the part of the owner and management of the team," Hopkins said. "Capitol Broadcasting owns the Durham team, and they are into traditional baseball. I've never been there, but I understand that Pawtucket, the Red Sox top farm team, doesn't do anything. They simply sell baseball. There are fewer and fewer of those. That's a matter of taste, how intense you are on promotions. I had an umpire tell me after one game that we were lucky to get it in with all the circus acts."
Circus acts have their place, even at baseball games. Baseball still deserves a larger place, plain and simple.
■ Lenox Rawlings can be reached at lrawlings@wsjournal.com.
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