The countdown is on for en epic battle of the big-boned mascots in Fresno.

It will be a matchup for the ages on Saturday night in Fresno, as the best mascot in the Majors will go up against the best mascot in the Minors in a battle for costumed character supremacy.

Representing the Major Leagues is the Phillie Phanatic, perhaps the most recognizable mascot in all of sports. His “opponent” for the evening will be hometown hero Parker, an affable bear who has served as the Grizzlies’ mascot for the past three seasons.

You can read the full story from Benjamin Hill at MiLB.com. As always Benjamin has his finger on the pulse of minor league baseball promotions.I am actually really interested in how the Grizziles present this. I toured minor league basketball for years as an NBA mascot and there is always an interesting dymanic with the hometown mascots. You didn’t want to overshadow then or make them look bad, but you had to balance that with putting on the best show you could.

Having the promoted “battle” between them puts the comparison at the very forefront of the evening. The Grizzlies have a lot of directions to go with this….however, the smartest part of the promotion is that Parker is being “defined up” win, lose or draw just by being compared to the legendary Phanatic.

I will be looking for the blow by blow results of Saturday night….and I don’t say that about many mascot promotions.

–Cudo

Thanks to Benjamin Hill for the link. If you don’t regularly, check out Ben’s tremendous blog here: http://bensbiz.mlblogs.com/

With the all out promotion and attention on this story, it is nominated for Best Game Day Promotion.

150 miles south of Seattle Ezra Ace Caraeff of the Portland Mercury has taken notice of a seemingly free agent in the world of sports entertainment.

Portland’s rivals, the Seattle SuperSonics, are on the cusp of relocating to Oklahoma City in the off-season. While Seattle will be unfairly stripped of their team, and possibly the Sonics moniker as well, this is a golden opportunity for the Trail Blazers. Not to obtain Kevin Durant (or any number of Sonics players), but to sign/buy/kidnap Seattle’s mascot, the enigmatic, charming, and hairy creature known as Squatch. When it comes to the delicate art of slam dunking a basketball while being propelled by a trampoline, few do it better than Squatch. His skills are vast and his mascot abilities are graceful and energetic, yet still tactful and refined.

Caraeff is right in his assessment, Squatch was one of the top mascots in the NBA. In this case it’s a combination of a great concept, costume and performer. The concept and costume appear to be headed for a storage locker waiting for a potential rebirth of the Sonic franchise, but the performer is headed to OKC to build a new mascot program for the NBA’s newest team.

I am sworn to secrecy of this performers identity, but there is a great story in the Seattle newspaper outing the man behind the mask. Hopefully the unnamed OKC team can match a new concept and costume to this talented performer.

–Cudo

Squatch is a one time Best Mascot on Gameops.com

Got this latest update from our friends in Fresno. The Grizzlies held Super Hero Night where the first 3,000 fans will received a special edition Triple-A Baseball comic book from Marvel. The theme night featured superhero themed walk-up music, “super-duper” player headshots on the video board, and a special ceremonial first pitch from the Dark Knight himself, Batman.

If that wasn’t enough superness for one evening, mascot Parker joined the Drag Kings for a Soulja Boy performance with the beloved “Superman” reference.

Again the Grizzlies understand how to connect the Super Hero theme across their entire presentation.

–Cudo

See more for video performance of the Drag Kings and Parker.

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I have been having a great time the last few days, since part of my to-do is to search YouTube for content related to all kinds of old interviews and articles on Gameops.com.

We are updating the whole site, combined with new tools and the amazing growth of YouTube has given us an opportunity to add video to pages across the site.  And I have been all over it.

In the mean time I have bumped into a lot of great new videos…..like this one.
The Dayton Dragons, well known as one of the best in the game operations business, is located near a military base (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) so they often build game entertainment and promotions connected to the military and military families.

On this night they had a special family reunion via satellite for a local Captain and his family….here is the video from that special video reunion.

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I received a note from an act this week, asking me to check him out on YouTube. David Burlet is the Original Baseball Juggler and is based in France.

Some acts don’t have natural breaks that would make it tough to perform in baseball, but this stage show (8 mins on YouTube) is something that could be split up and performed over several inning breaks.

Check out the video of this interesting and original baseball-themed juggling act, which could be coming to a ballpark near you soon.

–Cudo

For more info:

www.davidburlet.com

Today is Gameops.com’s 10th Birthday. Which is fun to think about and I enjoy looking back over the years at what the site started as and what it’s become.

I remember the wonder I felt buying a URL and posting a page live for the world to see, how amazing it all seemed.

I remember looking at the daily traffic reports and being thrilled at hitting double digits as word of the site grew past my immediate friends and family and now I am amazed at the daily visitor numbers.

I think about all the time spent building new layout and logos (and wish I could find that original goofy logo) and how bizarre it was to see a I logo I made on my TV screen as Stephen Colbert did a little blurb about Gameops.com on his show.

Gameops.com has gone from a handful of pages built on FrontPage to several hundred pages, thousands of ideas, products, ideas, blogs and video from every corner of sports. Later this month we will unveil Gameops.com 3.0 (what I call this third major rebuild of the site) which will take the reader experience to the next level and greatly expand how we can present content.

The best part is that the excitement I had sitting down those first weeks building the site hasn’t left, and I still love coming to work and trying to build a better mousetrap and help teams enhance their show. The challenges are always a little different, the scope of the tasks are now a little bigger, but the fun is still there.

Thanks to everyone who has lent a hand, given support, read, submitted, spell-checked, and challenged me along the way. You are too numerous to mention, but without all of you it’s safe to say I wouldn’t have made it 10 years.

Thank you.

–Cudo