Bats ready to get all worked up over 'Nothing'

Fans who make their way to Louisville Slugger Stadium on Tuesday night can count on one thing -- baseball and nothing else.

The Triple-A Bats will be doing their best impression of “Seinfeld” with a "Nothing Night" when they host the Jumbo Shrimp.

Famously a show about nothing, Jerry Seinfeld's self-titled sitcom (which ran on NBC from 1989-1999) leaned heavily on having entertaining characters, and for the Bats, it will be the same on Tuesday. Louisville's main characters -- top-ranked Reds prospect Elly De La Cruz, No. 6 Andrew Abbott and No. 7 Christian Encarnacion-Strand are expected to be at the ballpark, but that will be the extent of the scripting.

Nothing Nights are nothing new to Minor League ballparks. They strip all the pageantry away from the game and focus on the sport itself. Although it'll be the first time the Bats have hosted such an event, Vince Zielen, the team’s director of marketing, has put on a couple of them in the past and it's become one of his favorite events.

“It’s something very cool and fun and kind of quirky,” Zielen said. “It's basically throwing it back to old-school baseball. Throwing it back to 40, 50 years ago when there was really just the sights, sounds and smell of baseball.”

Zielen's first experience with Nothing Night came while he was with the Inland Empire 66ers, the Single-A affiliate of the Angels. He plans to utilize the scenarios, or lack thereof, from that event, and apply them to the proceedings in Louisville.

The beauty of the night will be that there are no frills, just baseball in its purest form. That means no walk-up songs, no recorded music between innings, no in-between inning promos or activities and no sponsored public announcements. The music for the night will be courtesy of the Bats’ organist Bob Ramsey, even during the national anthem and the seventh-inning stretch.

"It really gives the fans an opportunity to be heard more ... and they get a chance to be part of the game,” Zielen said.

Ticket prices will be standard for the event, although Louisville hosts $2 menu nights on Tuesdays. And if Nothing Nights continue in the future, there might be different price points for them.

“It’s something I’m going to push for next year where we really throw it back to 40, 50 years ago, where maybe prices are even reflected to what they were back then,” Zielen said.

For Single-A Lake Elsinore, where Nothing Nights have taken place since 2005, tickets are free, and Storm fans can bring their own food. Zielen hopes the Bats' progresses to that level after this season's trial run.

“A lot of our season-ticket holders have reached out to their account executives and our vice president of ticket sales, David Berry, and asked him like, ‘Hey, what the heck is Nothing Night, like what’s going on with it?’” Zielen said. “They’re definitely curious about it. I think we’re going to have quite a bit of fans show up just to find out what it is, and I think they’re going to end up loving the nature of the game.”

Plastered on all the video boards in the stadium will be a static image of the Bats' logo and a score line on the bottom. That will give fans the option of keeping score of the game on their own or tallying balls and strikes in their heads.

The night might be nothing, but that just makes the game itself everything.