Disclaimer: If you aren't a baseball fan, don't read this post, because it will mean nothing to you. If you are a big fan, you will find this hilarious.
I went to the Phillies Game 1 of the NLDS on Wednesday. The game was fantastic. The crowd was electric, Cole Hamels pitched amazing, and we won 3-1. That's really all you need to know about what happened between the Phils and Brewers. The most entertaining aspect of the game occurred after the 6th inning.
The Phillies always come up with quirky shit to do between innings involving the Phanatic and the other team and its city. Every series against the Mets you can count on the Phanatic dancing to "New York, New York" by Sinatra and taking a sledgehammer to a Mets helmet. So after the 6th inning, the Phillies announced that they would be holding a sausage race. For those of you who don't know, the Brewers host a sausage race during every game, which is similar to the pierogy race in Pittsburgh. Three guys emerged dressed in paper hot dogs suits, an obvious attempt at showing the ridiculous nature of the Milwaukee sausage race. I was thinking to myself how corny this was, until the race actually started.
Sausage #1 ran about 15 feet before he decided to hit on one of the Phillies ballgirls. It drew moderate laughs from the crowd, and the other 2 sausages (paper hot dogs) continued running around the outside of the field. This is where it gets ridiculous. An extremely fat black dude emerged from the Phillies dugout dressed in a Phillies jersey and black hat. He was wielding a wiffle ball bat and smacked one of the sausages with it. This should conjure up memories of the 2003 incident involving Randall Simon (see above), who was arrested and almost faced assault and battery charges for tapping a sausage with his bat from the Pirates dugout. http://espn.go/com/mlb/news/2003/0709/1578808.html. After a few seconds of confused laughter, Dan Baker, the Phillies PA Announcer said, "And o my, Randall Simon smacks Sausage #2 with his bat." At the same time, Phan-a-Vision showed a close-up of the mysterious man from the dugout, who actually was Randall Simon, looking like he had gained about 50 pounds since his playing days. He was wearing a Phillies jersey, and the black hat was actually a Buccos cap. Yes, you viewed that correctly, the Phillies flew Randall Simon to Philadelphia for a promotional stunt in between innings of a playoff game. Most members of the crowd (and people who will read this blog) didn't really understand the promotional stunt, but if you are a baseball nut like I am, and followed the fallout of the Simon incident in 2003, you have to give the Phillies promotional department props for coming up with this one. I'll search for a video of it later and post if found.
The stunt ended with the Phanatic obliterating the last sausage and "winning" the sausage race. But who really cares about that anyway?
1 comment:
hahahahahahahahahahahahahah, i remember randall simon day vividly. they should actually make it a national baseball holiday.
i wish i saw this kind of creativity in ny.
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