Last year the State College Spikes staged their inaugural “Mystery at the Ballpark”, one of the most inventive (and absurd) promotions of the year. The team produced a series of short videos that aired on the videoboard throughout the evening, each one providing a clue in the mystery of “Who Stole Ike’s Hat?” (Ike being the Spikes mascot).

On July 28, the Spikes staged yet another “Mystery at the Ballpark.” GM Jason Dambach writes that “this year’s mystery involved the Nittany Bank Nookie Monster, who is trying to find out who stole his milk and cookies (each night at the end of the seventh inning we have a Nookie Monster Milk and Cookies special for $1). The videos played throughout our game, and fans who successfully followed the clues and solved the mystery got to turn in their guess to win tickets to a future game.”

To whet your appetite for this stirring saga of dairy product and dessert thievery, I now present parts one, two, and three of 2010′s “Mystery at the Ballpark”:

A Shocking Discovery

False Alarm

Rough Interrogation Techniques

There’s no going back now! Watch the rest of this gripping saga HERE.

But State College isn’t the only locale in which trouble has been a brewin’. In Sacramento, River Cats mascot Dinger (aka “Sam Spayed”) is hot on the trail of his arch-nemesis Mascot Von Mascot.

Read all about it in “The Dinger Mysteries”, the finest noir-infused literary vignettes in Minor League Baseball:

Much is at stake here, as Mascot Von Mascot has stolen the magical Rally Pants regularly worn by reliever Brad Kilby.

Here are Kilby and the pants, in happier times:

Tin Caps broadcaster (and expert blogger) Dan “Elementary, My Dear” Watson reports that during July 24th’s ballgame, Burlington Bees outfielder Hilton Richardson was mysteriously replaced in the bottom of the fifth inning.

The reason became clear two innings later, when axe-wielding firemen walked onto the field and into the Bees dugout. Their mission? To rescue Richardson, who had gotten trapped in the bathroom. The rescue operation resulted in significant damage to the offending door:

From “The Watson Files“:

When they finally got the door open, Richardson was standing there, done for the night, propped against the sink, arms folded, soaked in sweat (it was humid and the heat index was about 102 at game time), thoroughly disgusted with life.

And that’s the story of how the bathroom at Parkview Field is a home-field advantage.

Thanksto Watson for sharing this anecdote, as it ends a three-year lull in the always-entertaining sub-genre of “Minor League Player Gets Locked in Bathroom” (lest we forget, Matt Elliot’s 2007 restroom entrapment was featured in the New York Times).

The final mystery that I’ll mention this afternoon involves this very blog post, as my humorous closing sentence has gone missing.

benjamin.hill@mlb.com
twitter.com/bensbiz