A couple of things from FanFest yesterday:

• I (Greg) had a blast giving four ballpark tours that took everyone all the way around and ended on the field. Everyone seemed excited and we love to try to take fans where they wouldn’t otherwise get to go (like on this blog).
• If you missed the podcast with the first fans on line, click here.
• Here are a bunch of photos of FanFest from Facebook.
• We raised about four carts worth of food for Lunch Break of Red Bank and Catholic Charities, two BlueClaws Community Partners. Thanks for everyone who donated.

I don’t have all the numbers but besides Dollar Weekend and Opening Day (more on this in the next couple of days, maybe tomorrow), one of the guys at the Box Office windows told me the most popular games were June 16th (Bret Hart’s Appearance), June 25th (Christie Rampone Bobbleheads), and July 14th (Vance Worley Bobbleheads and Irish Heritage Night). It figures Irish Heritage Night would sell quite well, you know, on St. Patrick’s Day.

If you did not get tickets at FanFest, they will go on sale tomorrow (Monday) morning at 10 am online, on the phone or in person.

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Unrelated to this, we owe you three days of spring training game reports, and those are next.

The first fans on line at FanFest this year were the same fans that were first on line last year.

Beverly from Brick, Amanda from Point Pleasant, and Joe from Point Pleasant came together and arrived at the ballpark at about 6:45. Armed with coffee, tea, a book, and a couple of chairs, they’re ready to kick off individual game ticket sales in 2012.

The trio has been coming to BlueClaws games since the ballpark opened in 2001 and expects that the group who got here second (behind them) last year will be arriving shortly.

Click here to download the podcast (right click and save link as) or to listen via your media player.

Click here for more on FanFest and we hope to see you at the park later today.

BlueClaws General Manager Geoff Brown was on 92.7 WOBM this morning with our pal Shawn Michaels.

Listen here.

Also, we put together a “User Guide” for FanFest, with pretty much everything fans need to know about the event, which is tomorrow from 10 am – 3 pm. Click here to read the user guide.

With FanFest coming up on Saturday, we sat down for a preview podcast with BlueClaws Director of New Client Development Mike Van Hise.

We go into some detail on some of the best reasons to come out to FanFest,

Click here to download the podcast (right click, save link as, you can bring it into your iTunes to listen to later if you want), or you can of course listen below.

Necessary Links: FanFest rundown, promotional schedule, ticket package options, BlueClaws staffers Build-a-Bushel.

FanFest is the day that individual tickets go on sale to the general public for the first time, and this year that will be on St. Patrick’s Day – aka your first stop of the afternoon.

Here are the full details, but as usual, you can save on tickets, get free food, discounts in the Claws Cove, ballpark tours, record-your-own-home-run, etc.

We’ll have more on FanFest in the coming weeks of course, including a podcast with some staff members about the event. Later today, we’ll have our “Build-a-Bushel” post, where we let staff members pick what games they would choose to come to.

So we have a lot more on the way.

Greetings from FirstEnergy Park on FanFest Day. We’re two hours before the windows officially open for business and we have some fans online already: Amanda and Beverly of Brick and Point Pleasant, a mother-daughter duo here to lock in their BlueClaws tickets.

They’re looking at Opening Weekend and the first weekend in May and we sat down to interview them.

Click here to listen.

Regarding getting here early, “We had a trial run last week,” said Amanda. They got the date wrong and were here last week!

We’ll have some updates and interviews throughout the day.

BlueClaws GM Geoff Brown joined Bob and Marianne this morning on our flagship station, 1160/1310 WOBM-AM, Good Time Oldies, to talk about a number of topics including FanFest on Saturday, some potential BlueClaws, what’s new at the ballpark, getting ready for the season and much more.

You can listen to the interview in full by clicking here.

We’ve compiled a bunch of stuff that will help you make the most of FanFest, here at FirstEnergy Park on Saturday from 11 am – 4 pm. We hope you can join us!

FanFest Essentials
First day of individual game ticket sales – lock in tickets for the best games of the  year, from fireworks to giveaways and more. Each ticket will be one dollar off the regular price!

Meet UFC fighter Nick Catone and win tickets to UFC 128 – Catone, who wrestled at Brick Memorial and will fight at UFC 128 on March 19th at Prudential Center, and he’ll draw the winning ticket from our raffle. He’ll be here 2-3 pm.

Jellybean guessing contest – Guess how many jellybeans fit into the SAL championship trophy. Winner gets a BlueClaws prize pack. Click the link for guessing strategies.

Ballpark tours – We’ll take you behind-the-scenes and all over the ballpark in these exclusive behind-the-scenes tours.

Two-for-one in Dr. Bernard’s Kids Zone – We’ll have kids zone tickets on sale at FanFest, by one get one free! Valid during the season.

You-make-the-call – Always a popular event, in this case, you can play broadcaster and call the last out of the South Atlantic League Championship Series. We’ll email the call to you so you can show all your friends.

Pick-up- Those that have already ordered their 2011 ticket package can pick them up at FanFest.

What You Need
2011 Promotional Schedule – here’s what we have so far, with more to be added.

Day-of-the-week Promotions – don’t forget that Kids Eat Free every Sunday/Monday, seniors on Tuesday, $1 hot dogs on Wednesday, $1 beers on Thursday, fireworks on Friday

Your Electric Bill – Bring you electric bill to the Viridian Energy table to see how you can “Go Green” and save money each month.

Non-perishable food – Anyone that brings non-perishable food (donated to Catholic Charities, Diocese of Trenton, Emergency and Community Services of Ocean County in Lakewood), will receive a voucher for two reserve seats to an April or May game.

That should cover us. Hope to see you at the park on Saturday!

We’ve made a few additions to the BlueClaws promotional schedule since we first announced it a few weeks ago. You can view the promo schedule in its entirety by clicking here.

Here are the additions:

• Dollar Weekend: April 8th, 9th and 10th…reserve and general admission tickets are just $1.
• April 9th: as part of Buster’s Birthday celebration, the first 2,000 fans 17 & under will receive a Velcro Wallet courtesy of TD Bank.
• June 23rd: In addition to the Phillie Phanatic, fans can get their picture taken with the Phillies 1980 and 2008 World Series trophies. We’ve had the 2008 trophy here but never the 1980 trophy.
• We’ll give out long-sleeve t-shirts to the first 2,000 fans 18 & older on August 6th, which doubles as Irish Heritage Night and a green jersey auction.

Individual game tickets to on sale at FanFest, the details of which are here.

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Not sure how many UFC fans there are out there, but you can meet UFC fighter Nick Catone, a former wrestler at Brick Memorial and Rider University.

He’ll fight on the UFC 128 undercard on March 19th at Prudential Center.

One lucky fan will win a pair of tickets to UFC 128 at FanFest next week.

One new addition to the FanFest menu, and there are going to be more, stay tuned, is a jellybean guessing contest.

We are going to put jellybeans into one of the SAL Championship Trophies, and closest guess will win a BlueClaws prize pack. A buck a guess, to BlueClaws Charities.

Now, how do you go about winning such a contest?

It just so happens that a blog called Cleverness, Getting Diggy With It has a few ideas.

Strategies for Victory

There are a couple of strategies you may use in calculating the number of jellybeans in a jar or other container.  In order of increasing complexity, they are:

1) Guess

It’s just a game. Arm yourself with the knowledge that there are 930 jelly beans in a US gallon (about 245 / litre) and venture a WAG.  I suspect you wouldn’t be reading this if that’s all you were after, loser.  So…

2) Count them

Don’t count each bean, of course, but if you are allowed to lift the container, you can count the number of jelly beans in one row (remember to compensate for tapering at the bottom of the container) and multiply that number times the number of jellybeans the container is tall.  This will yield a very good estimate.

3) Equate them

This strategy is best if you are “guessing” the number of jellybeans in a known volume.  In fact, it’s almost fool-proof in that situation.  You need to know:

a) The approximate volume of one jelly bean can be thought of as a small cylinder 2 cm long and 1.5 cm in diameter (Precisely articulated as: Volume of 1 Jelly Bean = h(pi)(d/2)^2 = 2cm x 3 (1.5cm/2)^2 = 3.375 or 27/8 cubic centimeters)

b) Due to the Jelly Bean spape and irregularities, there is considerable airspace in the container, along with the jelly beans.  It can be assumed that 20% of a given volume is air rather than jellybeans (though for very small or irregularly shaped containers, this figure might be slightly more… never estimate more than 25% air by volume.  Really 20% is the best value to use for n > 100)

So, to get your answer, you will want to determine the number of cubic centimeters in the container volume and multiply that number by can simply use a calculator to divide the volume of the container in cubic centimeters by 2.7 (3.375 * .8 to allow for air space).  Google is a great too for doing all of this.  For example a search for “cubic centimeters per gallon” and Google returns “1 US gallon = 3 785.4118 cubic centimeters”.  You can then use Google (they call it Google Calculator but you use the normal search engine box) to calculate your answer.  5 gallon bucket = 5 x 3785.4 = 18,927.  You just pop ’round the gorn-and-scumbles, and, Jack’s a doughnut, there you are!

That is fascinating.

FanFest 2010 is coming up on Saturday from noon – 5 pm. A bunch of different things will be going on, we hope you can join us, and here’s the rundown:

• First day individual game tickets will go on sale; they will all be $1 off, except:
• Dollar Weekend tickets, which will be on sale for the first time (April 17th and April 18th).
• First 1,500 kids get a FREE mini bat courtesy of the US Census.
• Scavenger hunt for Kids Club members.
• VIP Tours of the ballpark.
• Pictures with the championship trophies.
• Call-your-own-home-run in the press box.
• Story of Clawd readings (with me).
• Clawd’s Kids Zone tickets will be 2-for-1.
• FREE food.

Basically, it’s a full day of a lot of fun here at the ballpark, and serves as our official kickoff to Opening Day, which will be 27 days later. Hope to see you there.

 - Just a quick mention. Wednesday is e-newsletter day. You can sign up in the box on the left side, near the top of the page and right below Pinchy. We’ve got some good stuff in this week’s edition, new stuff you’ve never seen before. So sign up today.

 - The BlueClaws announced their flea market dates and other flea market information today. Here’s the release.

 - Finally, thanks to everyone for donating food and cell phones at FanFest on Saturday. The items went to Ocean County Hunger Relief and Cell Phones for Soldiers. The donation rate was outstanding. Thanks!

Welcome to FanFest 2009! We’ll keep you updated on the big day throughout here at BlueClaws Blog. It will be a fun and exciting day, as usual, so come on over and say hello (we’re in the press box), or just follow us live here at BlueClaws Blog. Questions and comments appreciated, but mostly just sit back, have fun, and enjoy FanFest 2009.

10:51: The line is beginning to form outside the ticket windows below us here at FirstEnergy Park. Remember, all individual game tickets are $1 off the regular price, except Dollar Night.

11:02: First podcast of the day…We spoke with Jeanne and Michael of Toms River, the first fans in line. Click here to take a listen.

11:52: Always a sign of spring when the WRAT brings out their enormous Rocky inflatable. It’s about 30 feet tall and today sits on the plaza at FirstEnergy Park.

12:00: The ticket windows are open and we’re officially underway at FanFest.

12:25: It’s packed. Great turnout today. A couple of great youngsters have tried out the You Make the Call here with us in the press box.

12:26: First pictures uploaded.

2:30: Sorry for the lack of blogging. We’ve got a full house here today. The US trails 1-0 in the WBC game against Canada, 2nd inning.

2:44: Stunner in San Juan as the Nedtherlands, behind the great Sidney Ponson, beat the Dominican Republic 3-2. All three in the first inning, all three unearned. The DR now needs to win two in a row to advance. That’s the equivilent probably of a 15 seed beating a 2 seed in the NCAA basketball tournament.

4:06: Josh Ellis here…the weather has been great, temperatures in the mid-60s have our fans out and about in all areas of the park. Asst. Stadium Operations Brad Ziegler is taking about 20 people around on a private tour of the entire park. They just passed me here in the press box where I am doing “You Make the Call.”

So far we have had a great response to this portion of FanFest and we may feature a few of the best home run and world series call from the day later on BlueClaws Blog.

The food situation…I just spoke with Exec. Chef Sandy Cohen, and he said “I’m scared.”

4:16: Just back from throwing some BP in the cages. US leads Canada 6-4 in the 7th in the WBC.

6:20: Sorry for the lack of updates. Let’s wrap this thing up.

We have posted some photos, and you can see them here.

The US did indeed hold on to beat Canada, by a score of 6-5. Brian McCann of the Braves and Adam Dunn of the Reds hit two-run shots and Kevin Youkilis of the Red Sox hit a solo shot. On the Phillies side, Jimmy Rollins went 1-2 in relief of Derek Jeter and Shane Victorino started and went 2-4.

With FanFest tomorrow, I thought I’d share our blogging plan for the big day. We are going to try to live blog the event like we did the Winter Tour. You can read that here. We are going to do some interviews, share commentary and pictures, and put it all together for you.

If you want to be interviewed, just mention this posting when you come on up to the press box and we’ll make you into a podcast star.  

As we’ve noted, the we’ll host our annual FanFest tomorrow beginning at noon. It’s the first day individual game tickets go on sale (all $1 off, except “Dollar Night”) and we have a full slate of activities (detailed here) all day long.

See you at noon!