A Baseball Fan / Manager Swap In Missoula?
The Missoula Paddleheads have a history of fun and engaging promotion nights at Allegiance Field, and an idea from their manager Michael Schlact has some fans excited about the prospect. It involves a fan-manager swap night, and to our knowledge it's never been tried before in Missoula.
On Halloween night, skipper Michael Schlact responded to a tweet from the official Paddleheads account which asked about upcoming promotions. The idea is for a fan to act as team manager (we assume in a limited capacity) while Schlact would watch the game from the stands. While no word on whether or not this will make it into the final promotions schedule for 2023 is available, it's pulling from the playbook of one of baseball's most interesting personalities: Bill Veeck.
According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Veeck (pronounced like "wreck") as the owner of the St. Louis Browns came up with outlandish promotions for his ballclub in 1951. He hired an actor named Eddie Gaedel who only stood 3'7" to bat leadoff for a game (Gaedel drew a walk, unsurprisingly) and soon after, Veeck held "Grandstand Manager Night" where fans were given placards to vote on how the team should handle decisions that night; the fans even picked the lineup. It is said that Browns manager Zack Taylor sat in the stands during the game and smoked his pipe.
The Paddleheads, reigning North Division Champions of the Pioneer Baseball League, have recently released their 2023 regular season schedule. So now we know who they're going to be playing and when, however their promotion schedule for the upcoming season will likely be released sometime in March or April of 2023, per a team source.