Among the assortment of bobbleheads, lunch boxes and a Ben Zobrist-themed utility belt (really), the Rays upped the standard for baseball game giveaways with the Joe Gnome, a 4-inch-tall garden gnome modeled on manager Joe Maddon. The Joe Gnome successfully plastered Maddon’s lawyerly face (it’s the glasses) onto a body with a distinctly hip-hop feel (the baggy clothes and awesome hat), and was so popular upon its April debut that the team brought it back for an encore in August. The stories of fans who arrived at the game late trying to buy them off their seatmates are now legend. Can a Longo-Gnome be far behind?
This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2013.