Living overseas I tend to be out of the loop when it comes to U.S. professional sports news, sports opinion in particular, which may be why I haven’t heard about the latest MLB money grab: selling ad space on their players’ heads.
Uniforms have already caused a lot of controversy this season, and it was big news when MLB allowed teams to sell ads as shoulder patches on jerseys, so maybe everyone is simply weary of discussing the league’s sartorial foolishness.
I am old enough to remember the scandal that accompanied TV broadcasters’ addition of a greenscreen behind Homeplate so they could scroll ads during the main shot of every baseball broadcast, the one showing the pitcher-batter duel at the heart of the game. The ads bisected that duel, requiring the pitch to cross the ad before it reached the batter. Now, as I am watching the Wild Card games between the Brewers and the Mets, the green screen is much wider and directly behind the plate, placing the batter, catcher, and umpire within—and essentially making them a part of—an ad for an internet service provider. Worse, the technology has trouble keeping the line crisp and clear between the live picture and the ad, so that the outline of the batter flickers like he’s a ghost. Just when I thought the strike zone rectangle every broadcast now superimposes was the worst idea ever, MLB comes along and says, “hold my peanuts.”
I used to be hopeful that there was some kind of Laffer Curve in MLB, some point at which owners’ and players’ efforts to extract more and more wealth out of the game will be counterproductive. That hope is fading as teams and broadcasters find more ways to sell ad space (Even on the mound there are ads now!) and networks seem willing to pay extraordinary amounts for the rights to bring the games—and their ads—into my living room. It may not even matter if people buy tickets anymore, which, even though baseball still has the lowest average ticket price of every major sport (even MLS!), are still $80 a pop.
Maybe there is a point of diminishing returns that MLB just hasn’t yet reached, but if there is I hope it is long before MLB uniforms begin to look like racing drivers’ coveralls or soccer jerseys. As difficult as it already is sometimes to identify teams, given the variety of uniforms each can wear, I shudder to think what it will be like when the teams’ names and logos are more difficult to find—if they’re even there at all. At what point do those involved wake up and realize that maximizing revenue streams is not always the right answer, and that just because you CAN do a thing doesn’t mean that you SHOULD? If the goal isn’t to make the game better, and remains simply to make the most money possible, then we will continue to get the reduced quality of game play we continue to see.
Today’s strike out, home runs, and walks game is just boring baseball, and I am ever hopeful of a revolution of players who love the game more than themselves, and owners who are intent on leaving the sport better—and not simply more lucrative—than they found it. Because whatever happens, I love the game too much to stop watching, but it would be nice if it didn’t make me so grouchy.
An Orthodox Priest Abroad 