Fans of the Kalamazoo Growlers, a baseball team in the independent Northwoods League, will have the opportunity to vote a “pile of chocolate” (as the team calls it) onto their team’s jerseys for a game this season.
The team, which won Baseball Digest’s “Promotion of the Year” award for its Salute to Selfie night in 2014, is upping the ante this year. Fans will select 25 emojis to feature on their team’s jerseys, including lots of yellow faces, some sports- and food-related icons, and yes, the aforementioned pile of chocolate. The full set of 100 emoji options fans can choose from on the team’s website are below:
The Growlers will wear the “Emojerseys” for a game on August 13. The mock-ups below give an idea of what the design will look like, but you know it’s not accurate, because the final result is definitely going to feature a pile of chocolate.
Of course, I want to hate this, but I kind of love it. I wouldn’t want to see it in the Majors or even at a high level of the affiliated minors, but for an independent minor league baseball team, this sort of promotion is just the right mixture of genuine fun and tongue-in-cheek to really work.
Important Update (2/16/16):
After voting (yeah, I voted), I received an email with an offer to pre-order my “Emojersey” gear, including a cap that will feature the emoji that receives the top number of votes. And guess what one of the examples was.
So yeah, get out the vote and we might just see a bunch of baseball players wearing “pile of chocolate” caps in a real baseball game.
