Part Deux

Tonight was the second part of the job training for the Tigers. Not much to say, to be honest... a lot of the slides were repeats of part one of job training, but we did get our annual security briefing, given to us by our wonderfully paranoid security director, who I think is awesome. "Hank" even added in some extra slides about how to escape an active shooter in the ball park, which is something that most civilians wouldn't consider but something that people with military/police first responder training would go over repeatedly in their heads until they've planned for all eventualities. Hank is definitely one of the latter, and I was tempted to yell out "WHO TRAINED YOU?!" in the middle of the presentation. Seriously, it was like reading a Tom Clancy novel, with how detailed the response plans were. I was definitely in awe.

In other news, our union contract was ratified with a vast majority of people voting yes. I spoke with one of our union representatives tonight before the training and he passed on the info to me. I was seriously afraid of what our job would look like if we'd had to go through the season on a bare minimum contract with no perks whatsoever. Having a union to back us is definitely important, especially here in Michigan which is now a Right-To-Work state. In other states with the Right-To-Work laws enacted, employers can hire cheaper labor, there are less restrictions on who can work, and there are no defenses for a worker who loses his job for any reason. It's a scary way to operate. Kinda like driving without insurance on your car. You just know that at any moment, it could all fall apart with a vengeance.

I have to return to the "great" city of Detroit on Thursday to pick up my uniform for the season. I believe we'll also find out what hats we get to wear for the season, since they've decided not to let us wear the same ones we did last year. For informational purposes, the hats we wore were generally the Tigers' standard navy blue with a white olde english D. I wore the batting practice hat, navy blue with two thin white stripes from the center-top of the hat, down the sides of the front fascia and along the sides of the bill, with the white olde english D. Apparently, that isn't allowed this year. Ah well, I'll have another hat on which to pin my collector's pins. Sparky's 11 will see a full season of action no matter the cost!