Minor league team misses the mark with 'Millennial Night' promotion

Minor league baseball teams are experts at putting on theme nights to draw attention.

But the Montgomery Biscuits, the Double-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, advertised one on Wednesday, and it leaves a lot to be desired.

The Biscuits are holding “Millennial Night,” complete with “brilliant” references to stereotypes about millennials. They want free stuff because they’re entitled and lazy. They want ribbons just for participating in something. They spend their money on stupid things like avocado toast. Essentially, it’s every article a baby boomer has ever written about millennials, but instead of an article it’s an entire minor-league theme night.

Millennials have struggled economically for a decade, since many graduated from college during and after the downturn of 2008. But nothing will make them more likely to spend their hard-earned money on a baseball game than holding a theme night that makes fun of them!

The theme night may be meant as a joke, but it’s tough to swallow regardless. Millennials (the oldest of whom are nearing 40) still live in a world that’s largely controlled by baby boomers. It’s the worst kind of punching down. Millennials get unfairly blamed for a lot of things, like the death of napkins (paper towels work fine, by the way), and are constantly maligned for getting married late and having fewer kids (or not having kids at all).

All of that is a result of a tough economic landscape, and it’s even more difficult to deal with because the people in power constantly tell millennials that they’re not trying hard enough, that it was better in their day, and their troubles are exclusively their own fault and no one else’s. It’s just needlessly mean, and trivializes the very real issues that millennials are dealing with, issues that have been largely overlooked by those in power.

When presented with some of these protests, the Biscuits Twitter account decided to double down.

If you feel strongly enough to complain to the Biscuits in person, they’ll give you free tickets for the theme night you came in to complain about! Because being presented with free stuff you don’t want or need but feel obligated to take anyway is also a very millennial thing.

Minor league teams work hard to people to come to their games, which is why “Millennial Night” feels like such a grand miscalculation. Aren’t they trying to get this age group to come to the park? Not just on “Millennial Night,” but on every game night? If they are, alienating them with a theme night that makes fun of them is the opposite of a good idea. If they have Italian heritage night, do they have Chef Boyardee and the “That’s-a spicy meatball!” guy come out to make a mockery of Italian food? Or focus on “The Sopranos” or “The Godfather” as examples of Italian-American culture? Because with this Millennial Night, that’s essentially what they’re doing.

A few intrepid Twitter users proposed a second theme night the Biscuits could have as the counterpart to Millennial Night: Boomer Night.

How would baby boomers react to that? We’ll never find out, because no team would be stupid enough to hold a theme night that makes fun of the ruling class.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on Twitter at @lizroscher.

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