Battle of the Sexes

July 27 will probably go down as one of my favorite days so far in my career as the Director of Media Relations with the Chicago Bandits. If you aren't already aware, July 27 is the day that the first ever Battle of the Sexes (baseball version) took place. This event, pitting my Bandits against the Schaumburg Flyers, garnered more media coverage than I ever imagined. Not only was this story all over print publications, it was on the web, on tv, on the radio and had a constant buzz with everyone involved and attending. What a day it was, here's a look at the timeline:

4 am -- wake up, rising before the sun was kind of fun but not something I reccomend

545 am -- I pulled into Alexian Field for the morning shoot with WGN

645 am-930 am -- WGN arrives, and we (along with the flyers) proceed to shoot various segments that appeared on the moring show on WGN. It was a blast, but the PR company for the Flyers messed up a little. They failed to relay the message that our girls were supposed to bring their bats, mitts, helmets, balls and other equiptment. Kind of a big slip up on their part, and it made us look bad until WGN found out we never knew. But, a few of our players had bats in the car, the Flyers had balls -- and some yellow ones too -- and we all made it work. The footage was great (as I was told by my mom and others) and hopefully it made people a little more aware of the Bandits.

930 am - 730 pm -- mayham as we all got ready for the game and did some last minute tasks

730 pm - 12 am -- Battle of the Sexes takes place, I help in merchandise (where we made bank) and also enjoy some of the game from Bill's suite at Alexian Field (given to Bill for the night by Rich, the owner of the Flyers) ... Media outlets that covered the game included the Chicago Tribune, Daily Herald, Fastpitch Blog, WLUP the Loop (radio & they were at the game too), examiner.com, and some more... all in all I was thrilled with the media coverage and Bandits owner Bill Sokolis was very pleased with the whole event.

Hopefully the Battle of the Sexes, which we won by the way, will result in more fans coming out to our final two homestands in August. Truth be told, we could really use the upped attendance, badly.

But, that's enough for now ... off to our "married friends" place for a fun night of rockband and movies...

@aophillips