From Minor League Baseball to GRONK SPIKE PUCK!

So much for resolutions, eh? It’s been more than two months since my last post, but I won’t make any excuses. I’m lucky to be able to kick things back off with a bang.

What does Rob Gronkowski have to do with the Worcester Tornadoes, and why bring him up when football and baseball are in off-season mode?

As you may already know, the Gronkowski brothers are incredibly athletic. Three are in the NFL, and one plays independent baseball. Gordie plays for the Southern Illinois Miners in the Frontier League, and was on the Tornadoes a couple of years ago. Rob and a few of the other Brothers Gronk used to attend a good amount of games at our ballpark. During one of them, Rob and Chris had a race for the ages. You’ll notice that Rob releases a similar yell to the one he uttered in the AFC Championship game this season when his Pats topped the Baltimore Ravens.

Gronk was in attendance for the Worcester Sharks game this past Friday, as the Sharks hosted the Providence Bruins. The Sharks paid his $7,500 fine for a spike directed at a New York Jets player in November on one condition: Gronk needed to spike the puck before a game at the DCU Center. The largest crowd in Worcester Sharks history saw Rob shatter a puck on the ice, despite hobbling on one leg in the process (and almost falling over).

*****

Anyone who works in minor league sports knows the disdain going through the storage closet or shed can evoke in people. There are always way too many old yearbooks and failed giveaways lining the walls and floor. No matter how many times you clean the space, the stuff takes it over again. This time Twister’s (digital) Bag of Tricks came up big for us.

I’d like to personally thank whomever came up with the idea to extend the invitation to Gronk, because it’s the only reason we have 60,000+ views of the Gronkowski Dizzy Bat Race on YouTube.

Though the video was recorded a few years back, it wasn’t published until Super Bowl Week this year. We had around 200 views through the Super Bowl, but some unintentional help from the Sharks put the video on the map. A couple of weeks ago, I saw some tweets by a few Boston sports journalists (namely Mary Paoletti of Comcast Sports Net New England) about Gronk spiking the puck in Worcester this month and replied with a link to our Gronk Gold. After a tweet from her, a few retweets elsewhere in the Boston sports world and some more Twitter promotion through us, the video appeared on NFL.com, Yahoo, ESPN Page 2, Barstool Sports, and even reached the Worldwide Leader’s TV Broadcasts.