Minor league baseball teams have run out of ideas and must be stopped

Hello. My name is Rodger Sherman. My job is to write sports stories for SBNation.com that we think will be popular and shared on social media. I spend a lot of time searching for funny, whimsical or otherwise wacky things from the sports world that people might like.

I’m helped in this job by the literally hundreds of minor league sports teams around the country. In 2015, major sports teams are more or less guaranteed huge sums of money, due to TV contracts and large, loyal fanbases, but minor league teams have to scrap for every penny. To continue operating, they have to draw fans to their ballpark, and to do that, they have to make sure fans know about their team and know that going to a game is enjoyable. And to do that, minor league teams turn into mini-PR firms, cranking out ideas and promotions that they think will catch the public eye.

Right now, there are hundreds of people sitting in minor league baseball offices across America trying to come up with new ideas to draw people to the ballpark. They will fail. They will come up with ideas, but not new ones. There are no new ideas. We have reached the singularity.

Yesterday, the Akron RubberDucks, the Indians’ Double-A affiliate, announced a Brian Williams-themed night, because Brian Williams is in the news for possibly fabricating details of stories and that’s bad because he’s a newsperson and newspeople can’t lie.

A co-worker suggested I write about this story because hey, everybody’s talking about Brian Williams so maybe they’ll share it! I clenched my fists and gnashed my teeth and howled at the night sky, cursing the banality of human existence.

Shortly thereafter, the Bridgeport Bluefish, an independent league team, announced they were offering Brian Williams a job:

The organization is hoping to provide him with a monthly stipend of $500, as well as an opportunity in sports reporting. “Our thought is to get Brian’s assistance in writing game reports following any Bluefish losses in 2015,” says Bluefish general manager Jamie Toole. “With his reporting style, we may even win a few of those games.“Brian Williams is not a story with any relation to minor league baseball, but within minutes, two minor league baseball teams were clawing into my screen, hoping they could get noticed through the veneer of Brian Williams.

Earlier this week, the Montgomery Biscuits, the Rays’ Double-A team, announced “Back To The Future”-themed uniforms, because people like nostalgia and Back to the Future was popular in the past and maybe people will like it:

To be mad at minor league baseball teams for kooky ideas to draw people to the ballpark is to be mad at zombies for eating brains. This is what sustains them. You may judge them, but they can’t be bothered to care. They do this, or they die.

We can stop them. Here’s how.

Find your local minor league baseball team. Triple-A, Double-A, Single-A, indy league, doesn’t matter. Buy tickets to a game. Not tickets to Kanye West Grammy Stagerush Night on June 23, not The Bachelor Night on April 17, when the first 200 fans get a rose and all fans named “Chris” can bring a date for free, not ‘90s Boy Band Night, where the team wears *NSYNC-themed jerseys and features a national anthem from Joey Fatone. Just go to a regular-ass baseball game.

Bring a date. Bring your kids. Tickets are cheap. Hot dogs are cheap. Beer is cheap. Baseball games are fun. Enjoy it. Allow the minor league baseball team to make money from playing minor league baseball.

Let us wean these teams from their belief that they must mine every pop culture moment for cash. We can defeat this scourge.