|
Off Base Look out, here comes the Spider-Man. And there he goes. Earlier this month, in a move so stupid one can only marvel, Major League Baseball inked an agreement with Sony Pictures to promote the release of Spider-Man 2 by slapping orange Spider-Man logos on the bases at big league ballparks the weekend of June 11. The deal didn’t stick. But in its own strange way, it had legs. Galvanizing baseball fans in over two dozen North American cities is no mean feat. The strike of ’94 didn’t do it. However, when it’s beneath even the Yankee organization, you know you’re pushing the envelope. Nice grandstand, George, but if Spider-Man were a free agent, he’d end up swinging from the Yankee Stadium mezzanine and shattering Rickey Henderson’s 22-year-old single season stolen base mark. And man, would he tag on a fly. It was perhaps the most ludicrous idea since Brooklyn Assemblyman Felix Ortiz proposed the fat tax and lasted about as long as Britney Spears’ marriage. It’s amazing this proposal even got to first base. They didn’t do this for The Natural. Or Major League. Or Bang the Drum Slowly. Or Field of Dreams. So why Spider-Man 2? At least if it was Batman, we could make the connection. Hey, while we’re at it, let’s get Elastic Man to lead cheers during the seventh inning stretch. And Barry Bonds can suit up as the Hulk. Truth is, however, the only superhero from a major revenue sport is Pat Tillman. I won’t ask if nothing’s sacred, because I already know the answer. This is the sport that brought us the Rolaids Relief Award and Safeco Field. These days, being a baseball purist is like being an Amnesty International observer in Abu-Ghraib. We’re talking about owners here. Wealth and fame . . . they want more. Revenue is their reward. What I’m still confused about, however, is how small that reward was. A hundred grand or so per club is not a lot to sell out for. You could hardly fix a Triple-A game for that sum. Like many people, I own a small consulting business. At those rates, I’ll take an inning and resell second and third base to an escort service. The entire ill-fated promotion seemed to be part of a self-contradiction in an era when the cookie-cutter stadiums of the 60s and 70s are being imploded to make way for retro stadiums. Exactly how unpalatable was the Spider-Man proposal? Put it this way—most fans would prefer Veterans Stadium, rest in peace, with the plain old white bags, over Camden Yards with Spider-Man 2 logos on the bases any day of the week. This farce will give Baseball plenty of moral authority when it comes time to mete out penalties for steroid use. But by the time they get around to that, they’ll be giving away spools of plastic wire to kids 14 and under to promote Spider-Man 4, co-starring the Olsen twins. These are the same folks who once banned Willie Mays from the game for being a greeter at Bally’s. Don’t even get me started on Pete Rose. Over the past couple of weeks, there have been comparisons to all sorts of advertising around stadiums from days of yore, but that’s just a bunch of Bull Durham. Granted, gimmickry isn’t new to the game. For decades, Max Patkin, the clown prince of baseball, performed between innings, though today, clowns run the game 24/7. And thanks to Bill Veeck, a three-foot-seven guy named Eddie Gaedel has an entry in the Baseball Encyclopedia. Veeck brought us shorts, a 54-year-old pinch hitter, and Disco Sucks night. So what makes the Spider-Man 2 ordeal so much worse? Certainly, there is something that does. As Justice Potter Stewart once said about pornography, “I know it when I see it,” and apparently he had seen a lot. Perhaps, as the name says, this is base-ball. At minimum, those two syllables must be kept clear of logos, icons, and paid advertisements. Back when Bud Selig still made most of his dough selling used cars, Charlie Finley tried to foist an orange ball on the game, sans his name or anyone else’s, and even that didn’t fly. In life, there are visible lines and invisible lines. The foul lines are still visible enough for managers to step over gingerly step on their way to the mound. Sony said they never saw it coming. If I’m a stockholder, I’m dumping Sony like Martha Stewart after a cell phone call from Sam Waksal. But you can’t blame Sony, just like you can’t blame Spider-Man. He just does whatever a spider can. It’s the people upstairs at MLB who worry me. My spidey sense tells me something is very wrong. Thankfully, like Ben Affleck and J.Lo, the big guns were gun shy. This time. Yet like that nut you dated in the late 80s who kept trying to get you in a threesome with the doorman, you know they’re not done bugging you. Click here to rant back. |