Dave Serrano dressed in a full-body chicken costume and did the chicken dance in front of his team and fans at the first-ever “Vol Baseball Halloween Extravaganza” on Thursday night.
His team was not chicken, however, as players stood in the batters box and faced mid-80s fastballs while not being held back too much by their unique outfits.
“I saw a whole different attitude with our guys today,” Serrano said. “Baseball is supposed to be fun, and today was a fun day. We gave up a legitimate practice day for us to come out here in Halloween costumes and enjoy being around one another.”
Some of the hit costumes of the night included: Rocky and Clubber Lang, Forrest Gump, Gumby, Elf, Tiger Woods and his caddy, Whoopee Cushions, Nerd Man, Marshmallow Man, a Tennessee Vol cheerleader and Si Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame.
This was not the first time Serrano has put together a Halloween event with a baseball team.
“We did something similar like this at Irvine,” Serrano said. “It’s kind of a new wave that has spread through college baseball. We are not in official season, so we are able to take advantage of Halloween and suit our guys up and have fun playing baseball.”
Serrano’s favorite duo on the field was Johnny Youngblood, who dressed up as Tiger Woods in his Sunday red, and Eric Freeman, who was his caddy and followed him wherever he went on the field with a full golf bag.
The duo drew quite a laugh when Youngblood laced a triple through the left-center gap. Freeman then ran the field with him as fast as he could and acted as if home plate was the hole and handed his teammate the putter from the bag.
“This was all a lot of fun,” junior shortstop A.J. Simcox said. “We kind of got into it a little bit with the costumes. We planned for this for a good while, and they told us it would be happening at the first team meeting of the year. It’s always good to come out here in front of the fans and interact with them a bit.”
Despite not being in the comfort of their home baseball jerseys, there was not a power outage. Instead, the Vols had several extra base hits and hit two home runs in one-half inning.
