{"id":612,"date":"2014-03-31T20:40:01","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T20:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theswitch.us\/blog\/?p=612"},"modified":"2014-04-01T14:55:23","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T14:55:23","slug":"cardinals-opening-day-make-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/switch.us\/blog\/cardinals-opening-day-make-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals Opening Day: Make It a Holiday!"},"content":{"rendered":"
We spent years coming up with creative excuses to get out of working on Opening Day. \u00a0Then we had a better idea: Make It a Holiday.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n

Every year, around mid-March, tens of thousands of people in the St. Louis Metro area decide to tough it out and go into work sick.\u00a0 Be it a bad cold or mild case of the flu, they put it all on the line for holding out on that sick day just a couple more weeks \u2026 to use for the Cardinals\u2019 Opening Day instead.<\/p>\n

With Switch\u2019s origins taking root mere blocks from St. Louis\u2019 second cathedral, Busch Stadium, we have always been a proud and loyal supporter of our hometown team.\u00a0 Even moving some highway exits away could not keep us away from our beloved Redbirds, as exhibited by the almost complete absence of staff that would come in each year on the day of the Home Opener.<\/p>\n

We noted this phenomenon was not exclusive just to Switch. Friends and family throughout the country would take vacation, personal time or a sick day to celebrate their hometown teams. It seemed as though people viewed the day as a sort of a holiday.\u00a0 So as an organization, Switch decided to make it just that.\u00a0 But what good is a holiday you can\u2019t celebrate with the ones your love?\u00a0 We wanted this to become a day for everyone to stop and enjoy America\u2019s past time.<\/p>\n

In 2010, we began our campaign to Cardinals Opening Day: Make It a Holiday!\u00a0 What started out as a tailgate slightly resembling a picket line from our office neighboring the stadium grew into a social media campaign 26,000+ fans<\/a> strong.\u00a0 Then this year, just four years after its original conception, fans’ cries were heard all the way from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.\u00a0 Budweiser, a longtime partner of Switch, used its clout as baseball\u2019s favored beer to get over 100,000 signatures from fans across the country on a petition that went right to The White House.\u00a0 This petition went one step further though by asking to declare Major League Baseball Opening Day a national holiday.<\/p>\n

While ultimately the White House decided not to make this a holiday, the campaign shed light on exactly how powerful of an impact, not just baseball, but all sports have on our lives.\u00a0 Coke Zero created a campaign to make the day after Super Bowl<\/a> a holiday.\u00a0 The city of Chicago hosted an early Fourth of July party for a significant amount of the city\u2019s workforce after the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup<\/a> this past June.\u00a0 Companies are even looking at different ways to make the NCAA March Madness<\/a> tournament a device to increase productivity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s undeniable, sports is one of those rare institutions that can bring communities together.\u00a0 In this day-of-age where there is much fodder over the new Facebook layout, it is kind of nice to have things people can still share a friendly beer over.\u00a0 We should preserve this good old-fashioned camaraderie.\u00a0 By making it a holiday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We spent years coming up with creative excuses to get out of working on Opening Day. 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