The Portland Pickles Summer League Team Picked a "Random Fan" Out of The Crowd to Take an At Bat, You Won't Believe What Happens Next!

Fuck it, against my better judgement, I'll bite. The Portland Pickles are a "collegiate summer baseball wooden bat team" in the South Division of the West Coast League. They won the West Coast League Championship last season. Their roster is made up of players who play D1-college ball for the likes of Stanford, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, etc. According to Sports Illustrated, they've even had a handful of players go on to play in the MLB. Kyle Manzardo of the Cleveland Guardians was at one point in time a Portland Pickle. It's high-level baseball. 

Additionally, the bio of the Portland Pickles official team Twitter account, which has 48.6K followers, states, "we play baseball from june-aug and make memes the rest of the time". A few days ago, they sold a cotton candy burrito at their concession stand.

I believe it was that same game during which they had Bigfoot take an at bat.

So from what I can tell based off my brief audit of their social media, the Portland Pickles are permanently "up to something". They're not the Savannah Bananas, but they might be on a slippery slope. I gotta think if somebody from Savannah Bananas league approached Pickles ownership with a breakdown of just how much money they would make playing banana ball, the Portland Pickles would be doing choreographed dances behind home plate that same night. 

But this weekend, the Portland Pickles struck gold with their Fan Appreciation Night promotion. They selected one "random fan" to take a bat during the game. Not a fake, "pitcher moves to the front of the mound and throws batting practice" at bat. A legitimate at bat that counted in the game. The opposing pitcher was trying to get him out. That's how it was sold. 

The random fan they chose was a man named, "Dixie". In this first video, you see Dixie run down from the stands in his pinstripe Portland Pickles jersey, short shorts, white tennis shoes, no batting gloves, no equipment other than a wooden bat and a helmet. And against all odds, Dixie draws a walk, steals a base, and goes on to score a run.

That was at bat #1. But he would get another crack at it in the bottom of the 8th. This time, for what it's worth Dixie steps up to the plate in black cleats, an ankle guard, and a completely different uniform. He proceeds to take the pitcher deep over the left-center fence. 

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What a story. A totally random Pickles fan in Portland, Oregon is pulled out of the stands and takes a college pitcher deep. The crowd went nuts. He got the ice bath after the game and everything.

The coaches were so impressed, that the very next day, Dixie signed a contract to play with the Portland Pickles.

When I first saw the story, considering the completely different uniform, I thought it was instances from two different games edited together. But that doesn't seem to be the case. It's all from the same game. Dixie was not a Portland Pickles player. He got two at bats in the game. He worked a 3-2 count to draw a walk. Then he hit a home run. 

I'll hazard a guess and say that wasn't quite a "random fan" they pulled from the audience, but that's still pretty cool. Maybe this is a guy who didn't quite make the team this year, and they called him up to play the part of "random fan" for their promotion, knowing if he so much as made contact with the ball, Pickle Nation would go nuts. But best case scenario happened and he went deep. Regardless of who he is, even if the pitcher was throwing him meatballs, it's not like anybody can just hit a home run on command. And obviously this Dixie guy is not too much of a ringer, or else people would have pointed out by now that this "random fan" just happens to bat cleanup for Oregon State. 

So good for, Dixie. Whoever he might be, or however he ended up parlaying Fan Appreciation Night into a spot on a summer league roster. Regardless of how it happened, he certainly made the most out of the opportunity.