Phillies' Minor League Team Offers Fan Prize: A Funeral!
By Paul Kurtz
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (CBS) -- Minor league baseball parks are always a hotbed of promotion for fans, but this one might top them all: tonight, the Phillies' AAA farm team, the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, will be giving away a free funeral.
There's no expiration date, so the winner won't be forced to drop dead anytime soon.
"This voucher is good for life, says Jon Schaeffer, one of the Iron Pigs' front office executives. "You're talking about ten thousand dollars in services."
Schaeffer helped develop the "Celebration of Life Night," an idea that is most certainly out of the box, so to speak.
"The way it worked was, fans would submit an essay saying why are they deserving, and we work with a local funeral home and collectively the Iron Pigs organization and the funeral home reviewed these essays," Schaeffer explains. "And they will pick a deserving winner tonight from the 50 to 100 submissions."
The winner will be selected in the sixth inning. But, Schaeffer adds, "There will not be a casket on site." After all, they don't want to get morbid.
By the way, the Iron Pigs also brought video games to stadium urinals earlier this season.
