Bad Ballpark Promotions
Strange things keep happening at the Texas Rangers ballpark, where in July a fan fell from the upper deck trying to grab a foul ball, instead splattering five really unlucky spectators down below. (They’re all fine, by the way). This time, it was a pre-game promotion that went wrong.
The U.S. Army skydiving team was flying in just before the ballgame on August 24 when one of them got caught on a rooftop flagpole, in hilarious warner bros. style.
This stunt-gone-wrong brings to mind the folly of ballpark promotions, where a combination of bad luck and alcohol have made some memorably bad moments over the years.
10 CENT BEER NIGHT. Again, this promotion involved the Texas Rangers, but at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. The aftermath of 29,000 drunk fans included flashing, mooning (it WAS 1974) and, eventually, empty cups, hats, batteries and rocks tossed onto the field. The Indians had to forfeit the game, and the league immediately enacted a rule banning cheap booze nights.
SOUVENIR BALL NIGHT. Dodger Stadium, 1995. The mistake the Dodgers made was distributing the free baseballs BEFORE the game. You can imagine what happened late in the game when the umpire made a borderline call on a Dodger batter. Fans gave the balls back by tossing them directly to the umpire!
DISCO DEMOLITION. Admission to a doubleheader between the White Sox and Tigers was only 98 cents if you had a disco record to donate. The pile of records were blown up between the games. Two things happened: 1) there was an entire game’s-worth of alcohol consumption before the explosion, and 2) EVERYBODY hated disco. An estimated 50,000 fans piled into the ballpark that night, and most of them stormed the field once the records were detonated. The explosion itself tore a crater into the outfield grass, which encouraged fans to destroy just about everything else. The Tigers refused to take the field for the second game, forcing the White Sox to forfeit.
And then there’s the Pepsi/Yankees promotion from last year, where fans jammed Times Square in the hopes of winning opening day tickets. When the crowd found out there were not enough tickets, and that they were for a game in June, the celebration got ugly. Nowadays, there’s always a camera crew on hand to provide b-roll to the world . . .
