Fan Can coming to Long Island Ducks ballpark

Lots of baseball fans drink beer from cans while watching games, but how many can say they watched a game while inside a beer can?

The Atlantic League's Long Island Ducks are betting that's a fantasy that team partisans will pay to experience. In a twist on the standard luxury box, the unaffiliated minor league team has added a 12-seat Fan Can to the 6,000-seat Bethpage Ballpark in Central Islip.

The air-conditioned but open-air Fan Can sits near the picnic area in leftfield. The team, which is not part of a major league farm system, is offering two Fan Can packages: $400 for use of the roughly 20-foot can, two large pizzas and vouchers for 12 fountain beverages; $500 gives you the same package except that 12 Trout Town beers from the Roscoe Beer Company -- the upstate company that sponsors the Fan Can -- are substituted for the fountain drinks.

Minor league executives around the country have gone to extremes to market their teams. In 2007, the Fort Myers Miracle staged Mike Tyson Ear Night, in which plastic ears were given away to mark the famous 1997 boxing match when Tyson chomped on Evander Holyfield's ears.

The next year, the Lowell Spinners held Political Correctness Night, in which the foul lines were referred to as fair lines, errors were not attributed to any particular fielder and every fan was named Fan of the Game.

In 2009, the Brooklyn Cyclones ran a "salute to pregnancy," including a pregame Lamaze class and an offer of free tickets for life for anyone who gave birth during the game.

The Fan Can itself was concocted by Seating Solutions, a custom seating company in Commack. "It came out of my crazy brain," chairman Scott Suprina said.

The Ducks' Fan Can is the second such installation. The first was a temporary Fan Can at the 2012 Major League All-Star game in Kansas City, he said.

And, of course, the Fan Can's adjustable theater-style seats include cup holders.

By Ken Schachter

kenneth.schachter@newsday.comkschach

Ken Schachter covers corporate news, including technology and aerospace, and other business topics for Newsday. He has also worked at The Miami Herald and The Jerusalem Post.