Trunk or Treat returns to Jackson Baseball Stadium

Even though it’s July and baseball season, the Jackson Rockabillies wanted to celebrate Halloween.

“There aren’t really a lot of opportunities to celebrate Halloween during baseball season, except I guess if you’re in the World Series,” said Rockabillys owner Dennis Bastien. “So we wanted to do something that people could have some fun with and incorporate that with what we’re doing here.”

So last Thursday, the Rockabillys celebrated Halloween in July, and they brought back a local Halloween tradition that hadn’t happened since before the pandemic.

The Jackson-Madison County Trunk or Treat, which had brought thousands of trick-or-treaters and millions of pieces of candy to Jackson Baseball Stadium on Halloween in the years before COVID-19 put a temporary end to a lot of gatherings, returned to the stadium before Thursday’s game.

“Tonight’s event isn’t as big as what it wound up being the last few years we had it, but we’re glad to have it again,” said Jeff Wall, who coordinated the event each year for years before he was first elected to the Madison County Commission in 2018. “It started out as just a small thing in a church parking lot to connect our local first responders with kids by way of candy, and then the next year a few people were asking if it was happening again, and it just grew from there.”

It went from church parking lots to North Side High School to eventually the baseball stadium.

In addition to the different first responder agencies, businesses from different segments of Jackson’s business district joined in the fun and sent people to give out candy to represent them and to help pile up as much candy as possible, as it surpassed 1 million pieces of candy the last couple years and falling a little short of the goal of reaching 2 million in 2019.

There were about 30 businesses on the stadium’s concourse and under the pavilion for about 90 minutes before the game started, and Wall was honored on the pitcher’s mound in pregame for his efforts in getting the trunk or treat off the ground.

“There are so many people who helped put this together – business leaders, first responders, elected officials, educators … it seemed some years there were more people in Jackson and Madison County who were involved in this than weren’t,” Wall said. “And we were able to do some cool things like – and this is just one example – we put Home Depot and Lowe’s next to each other so that the community could see that yes, they’re competitors in what they do each day to make a living, but they’re not enemies and they’re willing to come together for the kids.

“And there were other cases like that that we were able to do.”

Wall said the question of if the Trunk or Treat will make its official return in October is still up in the air.

“There are a lot of variables that are part of the equation, so we’ll make that call in the next few weeks,” Wall said. “But for now, we’re glad to be out here tonight, and we appreciate Dennis and the Rockabillys for approaching us about doing this and giving us a place to do it.”

The Rockabillys had a parade of costumes just before the first pitch in which all the children – young and old – who dressed up for the event were able to show off their costumes for the fans in attendance.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news