Entire Crowd Disappears Into White Van Following Ballpark's 'Tom Cruise Day'
For the minor league baseball fans among you, the LAT reports that tonight's California League game between Lake Elsinore Storm and the High Desert Mavericks will be a Tom Cruise-themed evening of giveaways and fun:
Besides giving away a Cruise bobblehead — make that a "bobble-couch," depicting the star in full Oprah couch-jumping mode — the San Diego Padres' Class-A affiliate will celebrate the "silent birth" of Tom and Katie Holmes' baby, Suri, with a "silent inning," during which no batters will be announced and no music played. "Silent birth," a Church of Scientology teaching, specifies no music and no talking during the birth.
Other planned activities include a couch-jumping contest, a Scientology information and sign-up booth and a retrospective of Cruise's movie career.
The Storm's opponent? The High Desert Mavericks, of course. No doubt in honor of Cruise's character in "Top Gun."
The article doesn't specify whether or not the "Scientology sign-up booth" is yet another gag element, though we doubt the Church would submit to what amounts to the bastardization of America's favorite pastime though a day-long festival of glib-minded Cruise-mockery. Particularly objectionable are the plans for the seventh-inning stretch, when the team's mascot, the Lake Elsinore Monster, will perform a routine inspired by Suri's conception, in which he'll chase a terrorized girl plucked from the crowd across the outfield with a seven-foot-long, inflatable prop turkey baster.
