Kepner: MLB’s latest tasteless cash grab? Ads on helmets

The thing about baseball, and it’s always been this way, is that the game itself is so enchanting, riveting and charmingly ridiculous that the people who run it know you’ll keep coming back, no matter what they do to it.

This latest indignity isn’t a scandal. It’s not the Black Sox or the color barrier or canceling a World Series or steroids. It’s just another sign that the commissioner’s office doesn’t think Major League Baseball is as special and distinct as it ought to be.

In the postseason next month, the logo of a German company that manufactures high-performance work clothes will “adorn” the batting helmet of every player.

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MLB to place ads on playoff batting helmets

Funny word choice there, from the MLB press release: adorn. The dictionary definition is to beautify; that is, to enhance the appearance of something by adding to it — like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

Then again, everyone has their own idea of beauty. To business owners, beauty is money, and that’s naturally a big part of the job for Commissioner Rob Manfred. He presides over 30 owners who want to make money.

But baseball doesn’t chase every last dollar it could. There are, in fact, some established limits.

Teams are still named for cities and regions — not companies, as they are in Japan. A few teams still don’t sell naming rights for their ballparks — Fenway Park, Dodger Stadium and so on. The winner of the World Series gets the “commissioner’s trophy” — not, say, a big Del Monte can on a wooden base.

Maybe all that is coming. Through 2022, the uniform was an ad-free zone except for the logos of the companies that manufactured the garments, which at least made contextual sense. Starting last season, though, teams were allowed to sell space on their sleeve patches — the left or the right, whichever faces the TV camera more often — and 23 of the 30 teams have done so. Only the Mets bothered to change theirs when the colors clashed.

Steve Cohen says the Mets’ ad patch is “Phillies colors,” and they’ll be changing the design to be more Mets colors.

— Tyler Kepner (@TylerKepner) April 7, 2023

Now come the helmet ads, which do nothing to enhance MLB’s product but might inspire you to buy some cargo work pants for $99.99. The sponsoring company’s chief executive, naturally, thinks this is great, as he tells us in this vapid quote from the press release:

“Whether on the field or in the field, your gear is a source of pride. We know that fans of America’s pastime are loyal, dedicated, and value a job well done — just like (insert company name here) fans around the world who love our family’s iconic ostrich logo.”

(Another linguistic digression: can we please reserve “iconic” for things that actually are widely admired, influential or significant?)

The company logo will stretch horizontally across the side of the batting helmet, with the not-really-iconic ostrich beside the company’s name. It will appear in all postseason games starting next month, plus all minor-league games starting next season (and MLB regular-season games in Europe, keeping with an odd precedent for overseas games).

Yes, the NBA and NHL and soccer have advertising patches. Whatever. If the NBA and NHL and soccer jumped off a bridge … you know the saying. Anyway, wouldn’t it be wonderful if baseball held itself to a higher standard?

It’s easy, from the perspective of someone who has never run a business, to say that MLB should have resisted yet another cash grab. But come on. It’s so tacky, and so sad that the league overlords have such little respect for the visual presentation of their product. They should be better than this.

To be fair, the league does a lot of things right. Manfred’s push for a pitch clock, and the thoughtful, methodically researched way that MLB went about it, has improved the game more than the glut of ads detracts from it. The pitch clock has been an overwhelming success, removing nothing of substance and restoring the sport’s natural pacing. A thousand hosannas.

That innovation showed how something positive can come from financial motivation. The pitch clock made MLB a more appealing product, so everybody won. Here, there’s no benefit for the fans. A helmet ad won’t grow the business.

As tasteless as it is, though, it probably doesn’t shrink the business, either. Baseball has this way of latching onto diehard fans and never letting go, and MLB knows this. It’s just a shame that the league exploits such loyalty with little insults like this.

Sorry, not insults. Adornments.

(Photo: Mary DeCicco / MLB Photos via Getty Images)