Benjamin Hill travels the nation accumulating tales about what makes Minor League Baseball distinctive. This excerpt from the Baseball Traveler publication, offered by Circle Ok, is a mere style of the smorgasbord of delights he affords each week. Learn the total publication right here, and subscribe to his publication right here.
On a wonderful August night at Peoples Pure Gasoline Subject, Altoona Curve advertising and marketing director Mike Kessling took a seat inside a makeshift concourse studio and leaned into the mic to start his nightly pregame present. The Curve, Double-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, had been slated to tackle the Hartford Yard Goats and knowledge wanted to be conveyed to the early-arriving followers in attendance.
As quickly as Kessling started to talk, his voice was overpowered by a cacophony of audio squall.
“It is a bit of terrible, if you’ll, that suggestions,” stated Kessling, sporting an outsized cowboy hat, hula skirt and mismatched sneakers. “As a result of it is Terrible Evening right here in Curve, P-A.”
Have been these terrible technical difficulties intentional? They might have properly as been. On Terrible Evening, high quality adherence goes out the window.
“You may count on terrible graphics, terrible music and terrible on-field [between-inning contests],” Kessling continued. “We had Scorching Canine Boy out on the get together deck, and I do wish to move this alongside from the entrance workplace: We do apologize that our high-fives didn’t are available in tonight, and hopefully you bought a type of vouchers when you’re one of many first 500 followers.”
Clearly, there’s loads to unpack.
Terrible Evening, maybe the purest distillation of the Minor League Baseball promotional precept that no concept is simply too silly, started in 2003. It was the brainchild of Todd “Parney” Parnell, a Minor League lifer who now serves as Senior Advisor to the Richmond Flying Squirrels. An early iteration of Terrible Evening was highlighted by Parney promoting that he would give away his just lately eliminated gallbladder to 1 “fortunate” fan. When this concept was nixed by the powers that had been the Curve resorted to gifting away photographs of the eliminated appendage.
In 2007, new to the world of Minor League Baseball and searching for the trade’s dumbest and due to this fact finest endeavors, I traveled to Altoona to witness Terrible Evening for myself. Highlights included a spork giveaway, a caped and shirtless man named Captain Terrible singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in falsetto and an marketed postgame “Laaser Mild Present” that turned out to be then-broadcaster Jon Laaser dancing with glow sticks whereas sporting a inexperienced bodysuit.
Three years later, as a consequence of workers turnover and shifting promotional priorities, Terrible Evening ceased.
“To at the present time we’ve faculty children name the workplace and ask us about Terrible Evening,” stated Kessling, who started working for the Curve in 2015.
“There’s such a repute to that promotion, and that simply lent itself to ‘We must always carry it again.’ In 2021, we determined to do it, after which it rained out. However that was my favourite from [the new] period of Terrible Evening, as a result of we gave away a 2020 crew picture which went over very properly. It was empty chairs with a single hat, as a result of the 2020 season did not occur.”
In 2025, Terrible Evening did occur, for higher or for worse. The aforementioned Scorching Canine Boy, an precise musician (and Altoona native) who wears a scorching canine go well with whereas taking part in the keytar, offered pregame leisure. In the meantime, followers who had been promised a “free high-five” because the night time’s giveaway merchandise as an alternative acquired a voucher providing redemption for a recreation on Sept. 8 (which was truly the primary day of the offseason).
“The whole workers has purchased into [Awful Night] and we’ve folks sporting their shirts inside-out simply to do one thing to be part of it,” stated Kessler.
At the least these folks had been sporting shirts. Curve mascot Loco took the sphere in a purple speedo and a Santa hat. (This led a fan named Camilo Romero, attending his first Curve recreation, to comment, “I didn’t know you could possibly make attractive terrible, however they achieved it.”) Al Tuna, often an exuberant “rally mascot,” later appeared on the sphere sullenly holding an indication studying, “I am simply right here so I don’t get fined.”
The awfulness was significantly pronounced in-between innings, with contests that included Identify that Odor, Identify that Tune (on kazoo), and a water-balloon-throwing competitors wherein the balloons had been ostensibly crammed with scorching canine water. Even the ballgame itself led to essentially the most terrible manner attainable: a walk-off stroll.
“Terrible Evening actually encompasses Minor League Baseball in a single recreation,” stated Kessler, who famous pridefully that different groups have staged their very own variations in recent times.
“It is simply terrible greatness going in all places.”
