Quick: name a sports event a family of four can attend for under $40, where you can chat with future superstars as if they were your neighbors, where the kids will be entertained with events like a Salute to Bubble Wrap. Any guesses? Welcome to the one-of-a-kind world of Minor League Baseball.
Have you ever attended a minor league game? Or have you seen the classic movie Bull Durham? If you have, you know that the game itself is just part of the fun. You also get wacky promotions like the previously mentioned Salute to Bubble Wrap, when everyone in attendance simultaneously pops a square of bubble wrap. Or Spam Carving Night. Because who wouldn’t want to see a Schnauzer carved from spam? How about Mullet Night or Useless Talent Night? Or the Backwards Race around the warning track, with a pit stop of beer? In the minors, it’s all about showing the crowd a good time.
Which works out well for a baseball romance, because that too is all about showing the audience a good time! My fictional baseball players, the Kilby Catfish, are even more wild and fun-loving than the norm, and I can get away with it because they’re Triple A. The majors are all about high pressure, high stakes, the glare of the spotlight. It’s a fascinating life, but almost all of those mega-stars have also spent time in the Minor Leagues – and that’s the world I wanted to explore. Before Derek Jeter made starting lineup of the Yankees, the team that Kaitlin is huge fan of, he played four seasons of minor league ball. Bryce Harper played for Triple A Syracuse before being called up to the Nationals. This means that fans who live in smaller cities like Columbus, Ohio or Syracuse, New York — or Kilby, Texas — get to see baseball legends in the making, while they’re still a bundle of raw talent and nerves.
What’s it like to be one step from making your lifelong dream happen? What’s it like to be young and hungry and driven? To be on the edge of stardom? That’s what my series Love Between the Bases is all about. CAUGHT BY YOU is the second book in the series, and it stars catcher Mike Solo and quirky single mother Donna MacIntyre. Those zany on-field promotions like the Mooing Championship and the Cheese Curds Toss? She’s going to find herself front and center of all that craziness. Hot baseball players with a side of lighthearted fun – that’s minor league baseball, and that’s what I aim for in Love Between the Bases. What about you, would you give a minor league baseball game a chance? Have you attended one?