Meet the ... Leaf Peepers? Thunder Chickens?! Coming soon

The Double-A Hartford Yard Goats are set to play games as both the Leaf Peepers and Thunder Chickens. Hartford's GM provides an inside look at how these alternate identities came to be.

Tom Brown was the first Super Bowl participant to also have played Minor League Baseball, but he was far from the last. Here's a look at some of the individuals who followed a similarly winding path to football's biggest stage.

The 1977 Triple-A New Orleans Pelicans, who called the Superdome home, arrived with a Mardi Gras-style parade featuring horse-drawn carriages, jazz bands and legends like Daffy Dean, Stan Musial and Satchel Paige as well as current players in full uniform tossing baseball trinkets to fans while riding on decorated floats.

Between 1931 and 1975, a "Junior" or "Little" World Series often took place between the best upper-level teams in Minor League Baseball. Perhaps the most notable such series took place in 1946, when Jackie Robinson's International League champion Montreal Royals defeated the American Association's Louisville Colonels, four games to two.