Sunday Rerun: Oh Rochester!

Baseball used to be such a simple game, at least where the uniforms were concerned.

The home team wore white and the visitors wore grey, because that saved them on laundry fees on the road. Really!

But then along came the multi-hued uniforms and things changed.

Meanwhile, someone came up with a brilliant idea.

Seeing that fans would shell out the money for the official caps and jerseys that the players wore, the team owners figured out that if a fan already had the white jersey and the grey jersey, there would be nothing to stop them from purchasing the orange "alternate" jersey and the black "alternate" jersey and the jersey with the pink logo for Mother's Day and the camo logo for Memorial Day and before you knew it, your closet was bulging with jerseys.

And the bank accounts of the owners were also bulging with jersey money, so it's all good.

And down in the minor leagues, anything goes. They will don most any crazy hat or shirt to get attention, and now the Rochester Red Wings, former AAA farm club of the Baltimore Orioles (currently affiliated with the Minnesota Twins) have partnered with the Seneca Park Zoo to celebrate the Naked Mole Rat.

Yes, fans, Monday, July 16 is "Naked Mole Rat" night at the ballpark, as  part of their upcoming "Animals of the Savanna" Expansion coming in August.

The first 1,000 fans to mob the stadium will walk away that evening wearing Naked Mole Rat hats that show the little varmint curled around the side of the Red Wings "R".

The team will also be wearing the same caps, and they will be auctioned off to benefit the Seneca Park Zoo Society.

Besides just being so cuddly and adorable, there is a suspicion that Naked Mole Rats have in their genetic makeup extraordinary abilities to resist cancer and diseases related to old age.

And you have to figure, if there is anything more fetching than a baby NMR, it's an old one.