Sunday was the Harrisburg Senators’ “Fan Appreciation” game. Even without a game–it was rained out–they did a “Fan Appreciation” giveaway. Basically, they opened up a storage room and pulled out whatever giveaway items from the past they had left over, put them on tables, and fans could get in a line and pick something.
I did this one year. I saw a Harrisburg Senators necktie, because from the way it was packaged it looked very nice, but later, when I took it out, there was a sponsor logo in a place that really made the whole thing garish as heck, and so I’ve never worn it. Liked the idea, but the execution was horrid. I digress…
Most of the stuff was for kids — kids jerseys, kids t-shirts, kids hats. There were some bucket hats, like that awful Playeros hat I got a month ago. There were some novelty baseballs, a Mayflies baseball given out this year (which I gave to a little girl who wanted Rascal to sign it when she saw Rascal signing other children’s baseballs, but then she got scared), a Playeros baseball they gave out last year or the year before which I have. There was a plastic bat and whiffleball set.
And then, there was what you see in the pictures, a plaque for Chris Andree, the Senators’ PA announcer who died in 2018, for whom the broadcast booth on the club level is named.
There were four of them in the box. It was impossible to tell what they were at first; the top of the boxes had only the Senators’ wordmark logo. I picked one up, looked at it in puzzlement, put it back, took it up again, put it back, picked up a different box, put it back, and took up, for the final time, the box I took to the end of the line.
I occasionally listened to Andree on the radio — he was a deejay on the River 97.3 — and I remember him on the PA system. His voice was unforgettable.
I did some research when I got home to try and ascertain when the Senators gave this out in 2019. The date on the box was April 7, 2019, but the giveaway for that game, as best I could tell, was a kids hoodie. I was not there that day; I attended the game the day before and got a Halloween t-shirt, which I may still have. Yet, I found a picture of it on Twitter, from April 7, that suggested that at least some people in the park received this on the day the broadcast center at FNB Field was rededicated in Andree’s honor.
I emailed my season ticket rep on Tuesday, and I didn’t really expect an answer until next week. It was a long season, I’m sure the front office was taking some much needed downtime before planning for next year. (Though I already have my paperwork for the 2024 season on my desk…) Surprisingly, he got back to me this afternoon.
The Chris Andree plaque was a giveaway on April 7, 2019, but it was not a “normal” giveaway. It was produced in limited quantities and placed off to the side, for people to take who really wanted one. In other words, they didn’t just hand it out to people as they came in the gates. He said it was probably “the gem” of the leftovers they put out for Fan Appreciation day.
I told my rep in my email that I’d taken it to work on Monday and set it up. The screw and wingnut assembly that holds the plaque to the base had grown a little rusty in the last four years, but it worked fine. It now sits proudly atop the bookshelf in my office.
