Sunday, February 1, 2009

Flint Artifacts: Flint Generals Key Chain



9 comments:

  1. OMG! That was the Millionth Fan Night promotion.

    This was in our first season with the team. I think they must have ordered a million of these because we had boxes full in the basement for years!

    I personally was not involved in this one , but ask me sometime about "Mister Sluggo's Equal Opportunity Costume Relay"...

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  2. All the one millionth fan got was a crummy key chain with a penny stuck in the middle? The coulda atleast stuck a silver dollar in there.

    I won a free car battery at a Generals game once just for sitting in the right seat. Man, even chuck-a-puck prizes top that key chain.

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  3. i sold programs at generals games for a season. jeremy turpen and mike meleragni and i got the job thru john mcdonald if i remember right

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  4. Leave it to a Flint team to hand out a penny for it's 1 millionth fan. They couldn't even manage to put the penny in facing forward either. We should have seen this as a sign on times to come.

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  5. Again, I wasn't affiliated with that actual promotion but the idea was that 5,000 people got that particular key ring. I do not recall what prizes the actual millionth fan received.

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  6. Come on Skinny, yes the Generals organization may be cheap, but your claim that the penny was some sort of predictor of impending lameness is way off. Since '75 the Generals (and Spirits and Bulldogs) have provided TONS of great entertainment through great and not so great seasons. Certainly alot more entertaining than NASCAR night at AJ Racers or The Crim or a cnical, cheap, unfunny knockoff of The Onion.

    Dennis Desrosiers, Wally Shaver, Robert Roe, Tony Fiore, Jim Egerton, Bob Perani, Rick Knockle, Robbie Nichols, Jim Duhart, Chad Grills, Jason Payne, Jeff Whittle, Erin Whitten, Brett MacDonald, Bobby Reynolds, KEVIN KERR, the '84 Turner Cup, multiple Colonial Cups, bench clearing brawls, occasional quality players, cheap tickets, what more do you want? Spoof 'em if you want, pro hockey in Flint has endured.

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  7. I wasn't implying that it was ominous for the Generals; I was referring to the city at large. Spirits, Bulldogs, then Generals games were one of my favorite things to do back in the day, which isn't all that far back looking at Gordon's posts. Back when Perani's was just a hockey shop, IHL/CHL hockey was one of the best forms of entertainment for a kid in the city.

    In 1988 Mark Reimer broke his stick, I was that lucky boy he handed it to in the stands.

    As an aside, I have no association with theflintskinny.net(cynical, cheap, unfunny knockoff of The Onion). Like many residents of Flint have done at some point, I took it upon myself to steal from them...specifically their name.

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  8. And did you realize that the photo is of the back of the souvenir key ring?

    The front of the lucky penny shines through on the other side, but alas, we have no photo.

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  9. Wow, how bizarre, I just found one of these floating around our house. I remember vaguely having it when I was very young, but I have no idea how it made it to our house or why it just resurfaced.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.