Even though I was rooting for the Tampa Bay (gotta support the underdog!), I figured the Philadelphia Phillies were deserved of my humble team schwag blogpost after winning the World Series last night. Cole Hamels, who actually didn’t pitch last night at all, but pitched the first 5.5 innings of the crazy suspended game two days prior, won the World Series MVP. He was stellar throughout the playoffs, winning 4 games, and was poised to win a record fifth before the Devil Rays tied the score in the top of the seventh.

I digress. Hamels got the job done every time he hit the mound, and hopefully some of the faithful Phillies fans busted out their Cole Hamels promotional jerseys from the July 25th giveaway at Citizens Bank Park. Life is good right now for baseball fans in our nation’s former capital.

Posted: October 30th, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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For those Minor League baseball teams that can’t offer to send fans away in used cars (see Reading Phillies post below), it turns out they can still offer a different set of wheels. The Lancaster JetHawks gave away skateboards to their first 500 kids at a game this past season! And for the parents of those lucky children, they gave a year of free medical coverage for skateboard related accidents! Ok, fine, that part’s not true.

If you want to give away promotional items, but maybe would rather not risk the lawsuits that might follow from turning them loose on skateboards, frisbees provide timeless fun for everyone. They advertise for you as they fly, and they don’t require helmets or knee pads for use!

Posted: October 29th, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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Sometimes you go to a baseball game for a free bobblehead. Sometimes you even get a free souvenir in the form of a foul ball. And sometimes, yes sometimes, you get a free used car.

Minor League baseball’s Reading Phillies began a promotion dubbed Pimp My Clunker last May to give away beat up but serviceable cars to lucky fans. The Phillies’ director of communication described the vehicles as having “passed inspection, but just barely. Four tires and duct tape come standard on most cars.” I once had a car that fit that description stolen from a baseball parking lot, so I think I should be first in line!

If you want to watch some minor league baseball and potentially win a junkyard scraper, check out the Reading Phillies website. Or, if you think promotional car giveaway sounds like a good idea, but you might want to do it on a smaller and less expensive scale, check these guys out.

Posted: October 22nd, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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New York Yankees fans could use this timely stadium giveaway, handed out on August 30, 2008, to count down the days until their beloved team left its
longtime stadium. Of course, it might not be suitable to calculate their ridiculous payroll unless they add a few more spaces for extra digits on the display.

It does seem a bit strange to give away a calculator at a baseball game. I mean, hats, t-shirts, beer mugs, boom sticks, etc. all seem a lot more like reasonable promotional items. Maybe the calculator symbolizes the fact that a large chunk of NYC’s economy revolves around finance and number crunching.

So, maybe you don’t own a baseball team. But maybe you work for some sort of company. Really, any company. If baseball teams can give away promotional calculators, surely almost every other organization would benefit as much (I would assume more) from such a giveaway. Slap your logo on the top, and propagate it effortlessly. After all, calculators make their way to desktops, home offices, and schools. And, occasionally, baseball stadiums.

Posted: October 3rd, 2008 under Baseball, stadium giveaways.
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With hurricane Ike threatening to really make things messy in Texas, it appeared Major League Baseball Commissione Bud Selig decided to create his own storm. According the a recent Yahoo! Sports article, Selig opted to move two crucial late-season Astros home games away from Minute Made Park in Houston to Milwaukee’s Miller Park. Chicago Cubs fans delighted! The two game Cubs-Astros series was moved practically next door.

After traveling overnight and arriving on little sleep, the Cubs handled the Astros easily in both games, thus pushing Houston’s playoff hopes further out of reach. The entire Astros organization was outraged. Players were baffled as to why these games could not have been rescheduled to later dates; Doug Brocail suspected that “if it was New York or Boston, it would have been played at the end of the season.”

At any rate, the fiasco quickly became a money-making opportunity for Astros fans, who printed promotional t-shirts (like the one pictured above), to help other disgruntled fans express their frustration with Selig loud and clear.

Posted: October 2nd, 2008 under Baseball.
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