[Westheim]

I used our off day to develop a few new business strategies. In case you’re new here, the Raccoons have no money, because they have some prick for an owner, who doesn’t give a lick.

I mean, we REALLY have no money. We have no money really hard. We have so no money, I go into the team’s locker room during the fourth inning of every home game and empty two semi-random players’ wallets for spare change to buy new balls with. (semi-random because whenever Danny Sharp costs a game with a stupid error, he gets robbed the entire following homestand)

So we have to get creative. Like batting practice. Most teams use somebody who has actually played baseball in his life. We use Ed. Ed is a good guy. He’s 82, and when he was a young man, there was no baseball. At Yoshi Nomura’s age, Ed was fighting his way across Guadalcanal. Ed got shot in the foot and never played sports in his life anymore. But he’s a diehard Raccoons enthusiast (one of only three alive), and he has volunteered to throw batting practice for free.

Granted, that second stroke has left his arm a bit “weak”, but hey, you don’t see any negative results of improper batting practice in the box score, do you?

However, the times are tough, with the team tumbling to a 100-loss season there’s nobody at the park, and thank god that week where they scored six runs over six games took place on the other side of the mountains and nobody noticed, since the Agitator’s raging derisions of this team are mostly consumed for the bold punchlines and then the paper’s thrown away.

I have a new idea how to get customers to the park AND save money in staff costs!

You know how kids love baseball, right? They are totally crazy about baseball, at least until they get Internets or some Xbox thing, or whatever that is. Bet the kids would love to be at the park for every home game!

So I will have Maud prepare a promo that kids can apply for a kind of internship with the team. They have to get their parents to buy a special (read: more expensive) ticket, but then get to dress as Raccoons staff with a silly hat and then we will send them sell ice cream and hot dogs and fire all our vendors. Also, since all the kids are selling ice cream, we will get to scrap the usual kids amusement things where we have some college dropouts that put balls on sticks for them to fumble a plastic bat at, completely without grace of course, since they’re like five years old, and probably we can even spare Chad and his services, perhaps even the grounds crew!!

So we SAVE the vendors’ and entertainers’ wages, the stupid kiddos are happy as they’re now important people for their baseball team, AND of course for legal reasons they have to be accompanied by an adult, so we can sell TWO extra tickets! If that is not the marketing idea of the century, then I don’t know!

I pitched this to my staff on Friday. Chad was high and had no clue I was about to get him fired. Slappy had come with a half-empty bottle of Capt’n Coma and was all but enthusiastic for the idea, suggesting to have the kids clean the floors as well. Vince shared a story about he had to clean shoes when he was seven years old. Honeypaws, as usual, said precious little. Only Maud shook her head in disbelief. What’s wrong, Maud? Anything I didn’t account for? – Maud?