Ralph Nader’s protesting ads on uniforms? Okay, being also a “soccer” (what most of the world calls football) fan, I shall say that I like the retro look of “soccer” jerseys, before they introduced ads on the uniforms, but I can’t say I’m incensed about the ads. (Lots of people walk around Singapore wearing Manchester United jerseys, thus providing Vodafone with free advertising here. But Vodafone doesn’t operate at all here.) I guess people either don’t mind the ads, or they won’t like it and won’t buy any replica uniforms and then the ads will become but a wistful memory.
I like the sneakily snarky initial clause here:
While the New York Mets and Chicago Cubs wore similar ads when they played in Tokyo in 2000, and baseball said in advance that the Yankees and Devil Rays would wear patches, Nader said the ads this year “ambushed fans across the country and left them shaking their heads at this obscene embarrassment.”
What makes the uniforms so sacred, given that firms plaster their names on stadia (Petco Park - where the bullpens are in play) and ESPN plasters advertising behind home plate? And surely, surely a spoiler Presidential candidate has better issues on which to run? (Maybe that’s his proof that the Democrats and the Republicans are one and the same - neither is doing anything about attempted advertising in baseball!)
Baseball always seems surrounded by these prelapsarian myths: the whole idea that Abner Doubleday invented this urban sport in the countryside, or the idea that it was never commercial in the past (see Veeck, Bill… or see the fact that one of the most beloved sights in baseball is the ball flying over the ads of the Green Monster, way back, way back, with the Citgo sign in the backdrop). I’m as much for a faux idyll as the next guy, but what’re you gonna do?