The rare lunchtime update, after last night was preempted by the first part of Anatomy of a Murder.

It's very rare for me to actually have the foresight for something like this, so I'd just like to say that I called this one in January.

And now the main event: Beam me up to the ball game.
Following work yesterday, Joe and I headed up to Cafaro Field in Niles, Ohio for a game between the Mahoning Valley Scrappers and the Jamestown Jammers. But this was no ordinary game, o mighty readers of my drivel. No, this was the quintessential tribute to the man, the myth, the legend, Jim Traficant. Yes, it was Jim Traficant night at the ballyard.

We had made excellent time on the highway, reaching Niles (apparently Youngstown's personal Monroeville) a little before game time, giving us time to enjoy the A&W/KFC combination (I thought the only chain that Tricon had bought was Long John Silver's, I guess I was wrong). We passed up both a sushi bar, and something called the Youngstown Crab Company. I don't trust seafood in Pittsburgh, should I trust it in Youngstown? I thought not. We also had time to find a used book store (unfortunately closed) in one of the weirdest and most depressing dead mall structures ever. It was almost as if a single projection out from the main corridor from a 1970's era mall was perfectly preserved, except for the feeling that it hadn't been aerated since the early days of malaise. Very odd. But it paled in comparison to two others odd businesses. First, Urban Chiropractic Center. In Niles, Ohio? Second, Girard Book & News, which was having a going out of business sale. I guess because they sold the book.

It was a good crowd for the game, but I was slightly disappointed, with an event like this, I really was hoping for one of two things, either they go all out with the sarcasm, and the crowd takes everything in the proper ironic fashion, or they don't take anything ironically, it takes on a sort of Nuremberg rally sort of vibe, and we can report back a comedy goldmine. Sadly, the middle ground between the two occurred, and it didn't really hit the consistent heights of lunacy that "turn-ahead-the-clock-night" did. (The benchmark of bad promotional ideas gone horribly wrong. Bill Simmons would have had a UCR 100 there.)

Entering the stadium we did see a few people wearing bad pieces on their heads to get the discount, but not as many as we had hoped. (Joe had a rather disturbing moment when he misidentified a piece on a guy, when it was actually probably real hair on a woman...we hope... we weren't about to ask.) Several kids were using prop squirrels as covering. (You ask: were they evil squirrels? Don't know, but they didn't seem to be attacking anyone once they set up shop.) The other promotional freebie was: if you were the son of a truck driver, you got in free. Joe and I struggled to come up with a way to prove or disprove this had we been asked. Note that at this point both Joe and I are wearing Quebec Capitales hats, so we start doing riffs on "you think the people will be impressed if they think we came all the way from Canada." I also contemplated going up to the second deck, facing the crowd assembled at the ticket booth, and screaming in a bizarre faux French accent "vive le Traficant libre." That would have been gilding the lily. Especially when I saw that they had someone doing a Traficant impression yelling through a bullhorn, from the same spot.
Upon entry into the stadium, we were given a Jim Traficant head-on-a-stick, suitable for PTI, and a fake ballot for the 17th Ohio Congressional District. We also were offered a sticker, only to find it was for the actual Republican nominee for the seat. Okay folks, this is the sign your candidate's campaign is politically tone-deaf. We come to praise Jim, not to bury him. Especially when you have people screaming "Traficant 2012".
We had good seats on the 3rd base line, and the game got going surprisingly quickly. I will give tremendous credit to the PA announcer for admitting that after you've had someone throw out the first pitch, the Jim Traficant impersonator has to be throwing out the SECOND pitch. (This has always bothered me, especially after seeing SIX first pitches at the last Washington Wild Things game.) And, of course, that means that Mini-Jim has to throw out the THIRD pitch.
Oh, did I forget to mention Mini-Jim? Yes, they had a little guy in the same bad news piece. This came into play in several pieces of the festivities, including a version of "Just the Two of Us."
Your Jim themed events included a What's in the Box? game where inside the box the winner got a Jim Traficant beauty care kit, also known as a weed whacker. There was also: dodgeball with mini-Jim, and mini-Jim runs the bases. This one was extra special. If mini-Jim ran the bases successfully without getting caught by the FBI, one lucky fan would get "a day of yardwork by the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, as a team-building exercise." While we couldn't have made this up if we tried it brought three things to mind: Never let HR people write the copy, never have I wanted to be in line for a prize more, and wouldn't it have been great if someone from the majors was on a rehab assignment.

Other promotions were also advertised, the oddest of the bunch being what was termed a "synchronized fireworks display." Like many things, though it was explained to us (synchronized to music) we kept wondering what an "unsynchronized fireworks display" would be...aside from someone throwing a match into a box of them.

The game itself was subpar. If you liked bad baseball, dragging a game into way too long, this was your night, a four hour and fifteen minute game. Not only did we have five errors in the game, thanks to some generous scorekeeping, we avoided having something like 8 or 10 errors. Possibly the best indication of how the game went was this: If not for the fact that all three throws were dropped, we could have seen a triple play. All three batters would have easily been out had the ball been caught at the base. Instead, one out, one run scored.

Inexplicable sight of the evening: Someone was running around wearing a Sylvester Morris Chiefs jersey. This one baffled us.
Proof of Burger's theory of the opposition: Not only were able to sit near someone wearing the Jamestown Jammers gear, it was the significant other of one of the players. This led to some hilarious moments where just after Jamestown knocked one out of the park, she would get on her cell phone like a proud mother at Little League "He JUST hit a home run!!!"

Finally, the fake ballots mentioned earlier served a purpose. There was a mock vote for the congressional seat, complete with preliminary returns. I was hoping for a closer vote, if only so they could have a confused and bleary-eyed Tim Russert clutching a marker board pointing at one word, circled on it: Ashtabula. But it was a landslide for Traficant, 66% of the vote. In second place was the Republican candidate, who apparently showed up at the game, (totally pointless and goofy act) with 20%. The real story of the evening in the vote had to be the strong write-in campaign for Scrappy the Mahoning Valley mascot. Scrappy, running as an independent, polled 5.4% of the vote in the election. This of course means the Mascot Party now has qualified for Federal Matching Funds in the next election. Chicken-Orange 2004!