MLB Showcase Round

Arriving Monday after an easy 14.5 hour flight where I lucked out with a four seat aisle to myself, we headed straight to Homebush the Olympic village from 2000. The baseball stadium was very impressive, it would be a solid triple-A park but it has been converted into an Aussie Rules Football oval and politics that I’m not privy to make it unlikely to be a baseball venue anytime soon. After checking into the hotel we headed for the stadium about 40 miles from the city center in Blacktown. The biggest obstacle is that the baseball stadiums (and I use the term stadium loosely) are obviously not built in the major metropolitan areas so it’s hard to market to and draw the city folk out especially for a sport they could care less about. So the task: Help promote baseball games in a market located 45-60 minutes from one of the world’s main economic hubs to a group of people who are not really interested in baseball…sounds eerily familiar

I really had no idea what I’d be doing this first week where there are ten games in 6 days. I definitely didn’t expect them to be handing me the mic and asking me to be the onfield MC no more than 30 hours after hitting the ground. I was less than thrilled about this but ended up having a lot of fun with it. They had an outline of promos that I was able to change around as I saw fit. One of the contests I changed up was a trivia game that I thought would take too long (they only allot 60 seconds for inning breaks). By taking Mac’s idea for a true/false game we brainstormed an Aussie version, and we ended up creating Australia’s fastest growing quiz sensation: “Dinkum or Dodgie”.

They also had on their lineup a Krispy Kreme Karaoke, which was something I had tried in Elsinore but found it impossible to find participants. The Aussie kids have absolutely stolen the show with this one, the first night 10 year old Ben got a standing ovation for his rendition of Pink’s "So What" from the 149 person announced attendance (I think literally 139 of those tickets were comped). Last night seven year old Tiarra won a unanimous decision with twinkle twinkle little star.

One thing that had me puzzled on their promo lineup was “the mexican wave”. It was clear that they were referring to what we less racistly call “the wave” and there was about a snowball’s chance in Perth that I was going to promote the wave at a baseball game so it was banged.

They are so immersed in American pop culture, and I’m still trying to decide whether that’s a good thing or not. Last night when I got back to the hotel around midnight and flipped on the TV, the sponge-worthy episode of Seinfeld was on so I changed the channel to watch something more Australian and what was on the next channel? Letterman… so at least they have good taste.