Waiting For Dmitri Young Bobblehead Doll Day

As the new baseball season starts this week, each team’s marketing department kicks it into high gear to try to get fans to come out to the park all summer. From giveaways to ticket packs, teams are usually high on gimmicks to drive up those attendance numbers. I combed through all of these marketing materials and have highlighted some of the more innovative approaches.

NL East

After an aggressive offseason of trading away its remaining players, the Florida Marlins are instituting a new marketing approach this season. Inspired by Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want pricing for its new album, the Marlins will be instituting a similar system for tickets: any fan can sit in any seat for any price, including paying absolutely nothing. Owner Jeffrey Loria has borrowed the business model of the classic American establishment, the movie theater. While food and drink prices are already at exorbitant levels at your typical ballpark, at Dolphins Stadium, a hot dog will go for $15, a beer for $20, and there will be no water fountains or food carts within a ½ mile radius of the park. To encourage patrons to shell out for the overpriced fare, each fan over 21 will receive a free beer when they enter the park. Loria has also hired so many food vendors that there will be one vendor for every seven fans. Not to be outdone, the New York Mets are on a mission to fill Shea Stadium to the brim for every game during its last season. This marketing blitz also has an ulterior motive: to make fans so nostalgic for the stadium that they will bid a ton of money at a season-ending auction of every seat, railing, urinal, and ugly-looking neon baseball player sign.

NL Central

In Pittsburgh, it’s the Year of the Buccos. During the 2008 season, the team will be playing with the heart and tenacity of an English premiership team on the verge of relegation—except the Pirates really will be on the verge of relegation. If the team should finish in last place in the division, Pirates owner Robert Nutting will move the team to the International League, and have its AAA affiliate, the Indianapolis Indians, take its spot in the National League. This little scheme will also motivate everyone on the Indians’ roster to play terribly, lest they be called up to the Pirates only to be sent back down with the entire team the next season. Can you feel the excitement in the PGH??!!? Meanwhile the Cubbies will unveil a new banner at Wrigley Field commemorating the 100^th anniversary of its last championship. This celebration will feature burning effigies of goats and black cats, and will also involve the selling of the stadium’s naming rights to Bubbalicious Gum for the next 30 years. The day after the deal goes final, owner Sam Zell will sell the team to a corporation owned entirely by St Louis citizens.

NL West

Having removed all traces of Barry Bonds from AT&T Park, the San Francisco Giants are going one step further and forfeiting every game Bonds played for the team in the past 16 years. This will probably push the Giants past 10000 losses, thus eclipsing the Phillies as the all-time loss leader. Mark Ecko has already purchased the 10000losses.com domain name from its current Phlly fan owner and is planning a grand gala to introduce the site and his new clothing line, Asteri*.

AL East

In honor of the exorcism of “Devil” from the Tampa Bay Rays team name (bad pun intended), the first 190,000 fans to attend a game this season at the Trop will receive a free Devil Rays t-shirt. They tried to give the old shirts away to kids in South America, but the continent is currently flush with New England Patriots Super Bowl 42 merchandise. Rumors of the Rays signing Barry Bonds as the DH have led to a huge fan backlash; should Bonds sign with the team, legions of fans will express their displeasure by showing up to games just to boo him. Hoping for the highest attendance in the league, owner Stuart Sternberg is also looking into whether Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire will come out of retirement to play alongside Bonds to form a new Murderers Row of Players People Hate. The Yankees, like the cross-town Mets, are also playing their last season in their current stadium. Rather than auctioning off stadium memorabilia, the team will be bussing next year’s St. Patrick’s Day revelers up to the Bronx to destroy the old stadium in a drunken mess of destruction.

AL Central

Ozzieball enthusiasts, rejoice! Each fan on Opening Day at US Cellular Field will receive their very own Ozzieball baseball. This talking ball plays eight recordings, including a recording of Guillen’s tirade against Jay Mariotti, a lecture on why you should always bunt with a man on first, and a song about the importance of being scrappy. Over the protest of owner Jerry Reinsdorf, Ozzie also named May 1 Venezuelan Heritage Day and ordered 10,000 Hugo Chavez posters to give out. Reinsdorf responded by ordering 10,000 lighters to give out the same day.

AL West

The core of Billy Beane’s baseball philosophy is that fans will always turn out to see a winner, no matter how the team actually gets those wins. With the upcoming season in Oakland looking to be short of wins, Beane has been in overdrive this spring to get fans to come out to the park. After each Saturday game, Eric Chavez will talk with a select group of fans on what’s it’s like to earn $66 million while playing 30 games a season. When Joe Morgan is in town to do a broadcast, he will be hosting Q&A sessions on what trades he would have made if he were the A’s GM these past eight year. Finally, Billy Beane will be giving personal guided tours of the underground facility that is “Moneyball.” This Cold War remnant is composed of 10,000 vacuum tubes, the alternate HAL unit from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and several abacuses for good measure. Fans will witness how Beane manually inputs every data point when determining what trades to make (the abacus hated the Big Three).

Hope Springs Eternal for Softball Wannabees

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—The sun-drenched fields of Southern Florida are a welcome change from the dreary grey skies of the District of Columbia. While many of you are enjoying warm, vacation spots during Spring Break, I have traveled south not for rest and relaxation, but for a chance to realize my second and third-grade dream: to be a professional baseball player. The story of how I ended up here amongst the myriad minor league hopefuls and aging veterans begins last summer on the softball fields of New York City.

I had signed up to play for my firm’s softball team on the first day of work, but could barely complete a simple throw from short to first, so I was banished to the outfield. I soon won over the manager with my impressive pop-up catching ability and willingness to lean in to every pitch, rising up to seventh in the batting order. Then one game, it all came together. Due either to my excellent hit placement or the terrible infield defense of the other team, I managed a triple, raising my slugging percentage an amazing .500 points. The next inning, as I was fielding a line drive out in left field, I noticed the runner on second was trying to leg out a run. “Not so fast, my friend!” I yelled. With deadly accuracy, I fired the ball home, and, after one hop, the catcher scooped it up and tagged the surprised runner for the third out.

A Mets scout approached me after the game and told me that the team would be interested in inviting me to Spring Training if Moises Alou somehow got hurt again. One Alou-hernia later, and I found myself on a plane to Florida in pursuit of a dream long thought lost. When I arrived at Mets camp, I was surprised to find that I was not the only former softball player invited to try out. Taking a page from Billy Beane in identifying baseball player market inefficiencies, Mets GM Omar Minaya has determined that the market had undervalued summer softball league players. The resumes of those invited to this grand new experiment (and hopefully the subject of a new Michael Lewis book) read like a sampling of America. There was the young investment banker, the grizzled NYPD detective, the struggling waiter/Broadway actor, the Russian mob wannabe, and the bike messenger.

As we size each other up, Minaya leads us into a conference room where he goes over the details of our tryout. First up is Celebratory Handshakes to test our chemistry with potential teammates. We are each given 30 seconds to develop a routine with Endy Chavez, but some people find this more difficult than others. After Endy slaps our Russian friend on the back, he punches Endy in the face and is promptly escorted off the premises. I had a feeling the rest of the day would play out like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, except without the blueberry gum. Next up is a filming session for Jose Reyes’s Spanish Academy. These promos are shown during home games, where Reyes tries to teach the crowd a new Spanish word. Today’s segment is the Spanish word for ice cream, helado. I knew from my previous viewings of these videos that they want the players to mispronounce the word so that they can cut to a clip of Reyes rolling his eyes at our stupidity, so I purposefully butcher my pronunciation. When we finally make out way to the field, only the investment banker and I are left from the original group. He mentions something about hitting a grand slam to win a game last summer, but he shuts up after I tell him I turned an unassisted triple play from the outfield. Clearly he has not honed the art of softball bullshitting.

Out in left field, we are told to alternate fielding balls hit by a double-A kid the team cut earlier that day. The young man’s anger from not making the team is manifested in each of his first 20 hits, which sail over the left field fence. Minaya, having recognized his mistake, sends the greenhorn back to rejoin the team and calls out third base coach Sandy Alomar Sr. to replace him in the batter’s box. The first hit off Senior’s bat rockets towards us and Mr. I-Banker decides he’s going to make a flashy grab. Unfortunately for his face, he has not accounted for the added speed of a baseball, and as he writhes on the grass clutching his bloody face in pain, I motion for a stretcher. Minaya does not seem content to let me join the team by default, so he puts forth the final challenge: I have ten pitches to get a hit off of Johan Santana. Luckily I know a lot about Santana; he is left-handed, he has a changeup, and he is from Venezuela. I take the first three pitches just to see if I can pick up anything from Santana’s windup. No such luck. Having watched three straight fastballs blaze by me, I guess (correctly) that Santana will offer up his famous changeup next. However, his major-league changeup is still a tad faster than the windmill lobs I’m used to, and I swing way too late.

After another six whiffs, I walk off the field dejected after coming so close to achieving my dream. Minaya thanks me for coming to the tryout and told me I would not be going away empty-handed. Hoping for a signed jersey, he instead hands me a Ryan Church bobblehead doll and a Mets metal street sign that says “Miracle Mets Ave.” As I walk over to a nearby garbage can to dispose of my parting gifts, I see a small boy leaning over the fence, baseball and pen in hand. I walk over and sign the ball for the confused tyke, who has no idea who I am. Some day he will.