The Quad City River Bandits will open the new baseball season by celebrating a championship. The club is holding a parade outside of Modern Woodmen Park prior to tonight’s game against Kane County to celebrate last year’s Midwest League championship.
General manager Stefanie Brown says they will have a “Parade of Champions” which will feature the team parading in. They will give away 111 penants to honor fan Shelby Harris, who is 111, and will be throwing out the first pitch on opening night.
The club has spent the off season planning promotions in the hopes of giving fans an “experience that will make them want to come back.”
“We want to plan when they walk in that there’s an entertaining atmosphere, that there’s good food smells…that we have fun interactive entertainment,” Brown says. She says those are the things they can control and when the team does well that’s an added bonus.
The Clinton Lumberkings open the season at home against the Burlington Bees and the Cedar Rapids Kernels open on the road at Wisconsin.