Minor League Baseball Honors Lake Elsinore Storm

Minor League Baseball announced today that the has been honored yet again.

The League will hand out the Larry MacPhail Award to the Lake Elsinore club for its promotional efforts that garnered regular season attendance of 225,769.

The attendance number puts Storm Baseball at the top of the pack in the California League for the second straight year.

"The Lake Elsinore Storm has been successful with its think outside-of-the-box approach to garner attention and attract fans, given their location in the Los Angeles market, for quite some time," said Pat O'Conner, president of Minor League Baseball.

In addition to winning the , the Storm captured significant local and national attention this past season with its promos. Its , revamping its social media campaign for 2011, and streamlining its several groups and companies to one location were factors in giving the club the award, according to a Minor League Baseball news release.

“Every weekday home game featured a special promotion, and on Sundays kids got to perform various game operations duties, including PA announcing and running the scoreboard and video boards,” the Minor League Baseball release stated. “The Storm has several mascots and characters that entertain fans throughout the game, including Thunder, the Rally Cop, the Rabbit Jackpot, who celebrates every Lake Elsinore homer, and the Groundscrew Gorilla, who captured this season for best in-game promotion.”

The Storm has also executed promos that stress the importance to kids of reading, staying in school and being environmentally smart: Participants who read "Thunder's 8 Tips to Going Green" book and nine others received a ticket to a Storm game. Thunder and some of the staff also acted out the book and went over the tips of going green during a 20-minute presentation, the release stated.

"We appreciate the recognition and feel pride in the accomplishment on being named this year's MacPhail Award winner," said Storm president Dave Oster in the release.

"We understand there are many creative and talented organizations in Minor League Baseball, so this is a reflection of the hard work the Storm staff put in this season," said Storm vice president and general manager Chris Jones in the release.

The MacPhail Award has been handed out since 1966. Lake Elsinore is the first California League club to win it.

The Storm will receive its award at the Baseball Winter Meetings ™ Annual Banquet Dec. 8 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas.