Wednesday, February 2, 2011

"Truck Day" picking up converts across the Majors

I'm trying to drum up some interest for the idea of celebrating a Toronto Blue Jays "Truck Day" in Toronto.

'What the hell is Truck Day?!' You may well ask.

Truck Day is the day the equipment truck leaves from the home field for the trip down to a team's spring training facility. We watch it pull off the dock and drive away - that's it. It's funny because it talks to a passion for baseball that makes non-believers stand and stare blankly.

Boston fans invented the ritual; here's a video of "Truck Day" in Boston 2007 - note the AC/DC Truck Day theme song seems to have been dubbed in with "Truck Day!" in the lyrics - or am I imagining that?.




Toronto NEEDS a "Truck Day" more than any other team because we're the most northerly MLB franchise - we're in the deepest grips of winter - we MUST have this early February baseball ritual because at this time of year we're not actually sure there will be an April.

Over at MLB.com "Truck Day" is getting some attention as teams' PR departments get on board.

I grabbed some coverage video associated with the article "Truck Day portends dawn of new season" by Mark Newman/MLB.com.

So here's video of three Truck Day's from 2010 that I uploaded to Youtube:

New York Met's Truck Day 2010




Texas Ranger's Truck Day 2010




Cincinnati Red's Truck Day 2010





Also from MLB.com a nice article on how the Chicago Cubs celebrated Truck Day last year: "Kids help send off Cubs' spring truck".

SB Nation reports in an article from last year, Truck Day 2010: Bigger And Better Than Ever, that in 2010 the Mets, the Cubs, the Indians and the Royals are doing some sort of Truck Day ritual; add to that list Boston and Arizona (??? - a 1/2 hour drive one would presume) and a total of seven teams have gotten on the Truck Day band wagon, so to speak.


(MLB Advanced Media will likely take the bottom three video's down because they aren't advanced enough to understand the value in letting fans embed MLB production. Perhaps this article will change MLB new media policy - but I'm not holding my breath - I'd be dead.) 
:)



mh

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