The calendar read July, but it was the end of December inside Guy Smith Stadium on Saturday. Santa was in the house and presents were being wrapped.
The Greenville Yard Gnomes hosted a ‘Christmas in July’ promotional night on Saturday while hosting the Wilson Tobs in a Coastal Plain League game. The event was one of 28 promotion nights on the Gnomes’ schedule this season.
It was a popular event and, despite the steamy night dotted with storms, saw a good turnout of excited families and eager kids. During one activity on the field between innings, fans engaged in a wrapping challenge. The goal was to wrap a partner in toilet paper.
Young fans even got to check in with Santa to fire off their gift requests.
“Our goal is to create a lot of memorable moments at the ballpark,” Gnomes general manager Michael Villafana said. “Christmas in July is pretty popular amongst baseball teams, but when you’re bringing Santa to the ballpark and having those memories with kids and their families, that’s what we’re trying to accomplish when we come up with a theme like that.”
Villafana spent four years in baseball’s minor league working with various teams in the marketing and promotional departments. Most recently, Villafana was the director of corporate partnership services for the Worcester Red Sox — Triple-A Affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.
He brought that expertise to Greenville and has helped this new team get off the ground. The team held Cartoon Night during Sunday’s game against the Peninsula Pilots. The Gnomes have five games remaining this season, with three at home on Thursday, Friday and Sunday.
The remaining promotions on the schedule include Tallboy Night with special drink prices, Greenville Summer Games that features various games and contests in the spirit of the Olympics, and finally a season wrap-up event in the final home game of the year.
“We’re still learning what the people of Greenville want,” Villafana said. “Going into the season we knew we would have to figure that out as much as possible. Like, what’s successful, what’s not as successful, what kind of food and drinks are people getting more than others, and things like that. We’re still trying to figure out what is going to attract more people to the ballpark.
“Last week we did $1 hot dogs and we saw an uptick in concession sales and ticket purchases and that’s something we’ll keep in mind with our final games this week as well as going into 2025. This season, we approached this with the question of what will fans enjoy and what will drive people to the ballpark? We’ve thrown a lot of things at the wall to see what sticks and in the offseason we’ll kick around some new ideas, too. We definitely had a good first season of learning and hopefully we’ll continue that next year.”
Aside from the themed promotional nights, the Gnomes always drive fan engagement between innings. It’s like a super-powered minor league game with something to catch your attention during breaks in the on-field action.
During a recent Gnomes game, the staff had plans for each inning break.
Four contestants raced around the apron of the infield rolling tires. Another inning break had contestants keep a volley going using pickleball paddles. The next inning break featured two young girls racing while balancing a serving tray holding plastic cups of water.
The marketing team also held a golf chipping contest, another game where fans had to throw plastic balls into yellow buckets, as well as a rock, paper, scissors contest where the loser got a pie in the face.
Before it all went down, contestants readied near the first base dugout by practicing the upcoming challenges with the marketing and gameday staff. Villafana said the team employs anywhere from 25 to 30 workers during game day, including concession workers, ticket takers, on-field promotional staff and others.
“Some on-field promotions are built into sponsorships,” Villafana said, pointing to the tire roll. “So we do those, and then there are others that we will tie in for the theme for the night. Thirsty Thursday we might do more drinking game activities, and for Christmas in July they had to wrap someone in toilet paper.
“It kind of depends on the promotion that people will get into it more than others. Star Wars nights do really well, margarita nights do well, and you’ll see upticks in interest for that, so anything that we can do to create that excitement is what we’re looking for.”
With the Gnomes season coming to a close by the end of the month, Villafana said the team expects to be active in the community in the offseason. The team views this first season as a success. It was a bit of a trial by fire and a lot of learning and adjusting on the fly, and that is exactly what Villafana hoped for.
After the season, he and his staff, along with the CPL and other teams, will collaborate and review the workings of the team to determine what worked, what didn’t work and what could have been better.
“We’ll head into our offseason, which is preparing for the following year, reflecting on what went well this year, what didn’t go well and what do we want to keep for next year?” Villafana said. “What new ideas can we do to improve from year to year is kind of the process that we’ll do.
“And that’s a collaborative effort amongst not only our front office staff but our ownership and the other teams that are within our ownership. So it’s always a good process and we’ll take what we learned and apply it to do things better in 2025. We are hoping to do some sort of events in the offseason as well, whether it’s in the ballpark or in the community. Our season is 2.5 months long, but we are a 12-month business. We want to make our presence felt, and anything we can do to help the community that supports us is something we’re interested in.”
Most Popular
Comments / 0