Grady Sizemore is the new focus of the Cleveland Indians marketing department:

“Our female market demographic research showed there were 200 percent more women watching Indians games last season,” said Indians vice president Bob DiBiasio. “Grady is the big reason. It’s manifested in the ‘Mrs. Sizemore’ T-shirts.”
When the Indians introduced the “Mrs. Sizemore” T-shirts last season, they sold 600 in six days.
His fan club is known as “Grady’s Ladies.”

For some reason, however, it’s not in their official store, and I can’t find a picture on the internet. If someone has this shirt, please send a picture.
Update: Grady’s female fans are found at The Grady’s Ladies Sisterhood. Ashlee is the only one wearing the Mrs. Sizemore shirt, however.
Baseball Musings is conducting a pledge drive in March. Click here for details.

Thinking about this post, I’m surprised Topps doesn’t have a program that randomly generates the card numbers for players. It’s not difficult to write. Click here to generate a list of card numbers for 2005 players. The random evil player is cited above the table.
Update: If anyone gets Tyrell Godwin or Jesus Colome as their Random Evil Player, let me know.
Update: I just got Ryan Church!

This is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while (scroll down to the second section):

Book it now: Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez will be card No. 666 in the 2006 edition of Topps Total baseball cards.
Topps officials acknowledge that the employee who assembles the company’s card checklists is a Yankees fan who assigns the undesirable number to the pitcher or player on the team that knocks the Yankees out of the playoffs.
That’s why Red Sox reliever Keith Foulke, who got the last out of the 2004 ALCS, was number 666 in 2005 Total, and why the Florida Marlins’ Josh Beckett of Spring, who beat the Yankees in the 2003 World Series finale, was 666 in the 2004 set.

I wonder who gets it if the Yankees win?

There’s a new Boston Red Sox T-Shirt available. 🙂

Baseball merchandise is flying off the shelves:

Gross retail sales of licensed products are up by almost 100 percent in the first part of the year compared to the same period last season, according to Tim Brosnan, executive vice president of business for Major League Baseball.
“It’s in part due to the fact that we had fans with a lot of pent up desire, supporting a team that hadn’t won the World Series in 86 years,” said Bob DuPuy, baseball’s president and chief operating officer, referring to the Boston Red Sox.
According to SportsScanINFO, a retail tracking firm, licensed headwear is up 79 percent, with the New York Yankees and Red Sox making up 53 percent of total licensed merchandise sales.
At this time last year, Red Sox gear made up 12 percent of all merchandise sold. This year, that number has jumped to 21 percent, said Neil Schwartz, SportsScanINFO’s director of marketing.

This is another example that the steroid scandal isn’t really resonating with fans. It’s a good story to sell newspapers and garner votes, but your average baseball fan just wants to see his or her team win.
Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive during March. Click here for details.

Greg Storey put together a nice photoshop of Damon rounding the bases after his grand slam. And he’s selling T-Shirts!
And while I’m on shameless plugs, Baseball Info Solutions is selling books and downloadable season stats.

Darren Viola sent me a link to this article on how the Yankees are replacing Cracker Jack with Crunch ‘n Munch. (By the way, shouldn’t the middle sound be spelled with two apostrophes, like the Cask ‘n’ Flagon? (Oops, there seems to be some confusion here. I remember the old wooden sign having two. But the one Soxaholix shows has one. Yet a google search for Cask Flagon bar shows most spell it with two.))
Where was I? Yes, this upsets Michele almost as much as a Ted Rall cartoon. Personally, I think they’re both good products. They’re both way overpriced at the park anyway. And no one is going to stop you from singing the song, even if the park doesn’t sell the product.
Correction: Fixed spelling of Soxaholix.

As some of the commentors to this site indicated last night, MLB has taken the the Spiderman advertising off the bases. One thing that disappointed me about the first movie was that they didn’t use the Spiderman theme from the old Saturday morning cartoon. The commissioner even gets mentioned!

Is he strong? Listen, Bud!
He’s got radioactive blood.

Which brings me to this Bud Selig quote:

“It isn’t worth, frankly, having a debate about,” commissioner Bud Selig told The Associated Press in Oakland before the Yankees-Athletics game.
“I’m a traditionalist,” he said. “The problem in sports marketing, particularly in baseball, is you’re always walking a very sensitive line. Nobody loves tradition and history as much as I do.”

Now that I’m no longer rolling on the floor laughing (expansion, wild card, realignment, interleague play, contraction), all I have to say is, “What a schmuck!” Bud, it’s okay for baseball to want to make money through advertising. But don’t try something like this, then try to say you’re on the fan’s side. It’s very clear to all of us that the only thing you care about is the bottom line. According to Doug Pappas’ counter, there’s 968 days left in Selig’s term. I going to have a big party when it goes to zero.

Jose from Spain writes in response to this post:

I just wanted to comment on the logo thing on the bases. Here in Spain, where soccer is the most important sport, they have had ads on their shirts for ages. Some teams have an ad on the shirt and another one on their pants, on the butt. And the game is the same and commands the same passions. After a while you don’t really notice. I think it’s inevitable that baseball will do the same. Some soccer teams (Real Madrid, Manchester United) take in 10-12 million a year on their sponsorship deals for the shirts.
By the way, a Spanish team (Atletico de Madrid) has a deal with a movie studios and it displays a movie in the shirt, which changes about every six weeks or so.
What they haven’t done, though, is put logos on the pristine green field. Rugby has though. Last Six Nations tournament (the most important rugby tournament in Europe, played by England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy) had a couple of prominent logos of the Royal Bank of Scotland on the playing field. Or pitch, as they say in the UK.
European basketball has also big logos on the court. Like some NBA teams (the Rockets come to mind with that rocket drawn on the court, at least a few years ago), European basketball teams have logos on the court, similar to the NBA Finals logos you get at Finals time. Also, the keys and the central circle may have also some ads.
So, what is the fuss about some small logos on the bases which can’t even be seen on TV?

Some people just like to make a fuss, Jose.

An interesting sidelight in this story on Angels starting pitchers competing for jobs. Moreno is trying to create an Angels brand:

Owner Arte Moreno’s goal to brand the Angels name was evident with the release of the club’s media guide. Even though they added the best free agent pitcher and position player in baseball and feature an emerging star in Garret Anderson, no players grace the cover.
Instead, the cover simply features the “A’ logo with a red backdrop that includes the word “Angels’ inscribed 80 times.
Unlike last year’s guide, the City name of Anaheim does not appear on the cover, which dovetails with Moreno’s decision to remove Anaheim from road uniforms and almost any literature associated with the team. The Angels’ lease with the city requires them to keep the city name on the home stadium, which is why it is Angel Stadium of Anaheim.
“It was determined that the brand is the most important thing right now,’ said Tim Mead, the Angels vice president of communications. “That’s a theme we’ll see throughout the year.’

This makes me wonder if they’ll go back to being the California Angels at some point. Maybe Moreno wants them to be the LA team, so he wants to distance them from Anaheim? If anyone has any ideas about this, please let me know.

Brian over at Rock’em Schnockem thinks that Steve Bartman isn’t making enough of his foul ball fame.

Bartman — When they blow up your ball today, you should be pushing that button. Imagine the feeling! We can’t all make oodles of money AND exorcise our past at the same time. Sure, I could go back to West Point and flip off the Superintendant, but that’s on my dime, and all it would get me is stranded in frikkin’ New York. I could go back to a high school reunion and say to Erin Schreck, “Damn you were hot and I was a dunce”, but all that would get me is stranded in frikkin’ Iowa next to a gal laughing at my bald head. You see — you (Bartman) were handed this steaming pile from on high, and have done nothing with it, other than hope it goes away.

Update: You can watch the ball be destroyed on MSNBC tonight at about 8:30 PM, EST. Keith Olbermann hosts, so at least they’ll have someone who knows a lot about baseball history.

Here’s the sort of added benefits winning can bring to a team. Joe Capozzi of the Palm Beach Post pens this article about how the Marlins have become a marketing dream:

Once a joke of the sports world, the Florida Marlins — a franchise synonymous with the terms “fire sale” and “dismantling” — have blossomed into sports marketing darlings.
“Now it’s cool to like the Marlins. It’s cool to like what they stand for,” said John Boggs, a San Diego-based marketing agent whose clients include McKeon, the National League’s Manager of the Year.
After upsetting the New York Yankees in the World Series, the underdog, low-revenue Marlins stand for hope. And that message is being conveyed by representatives of two distant and different demographic targets.
“In Miami, you have a lot of retired people who can relate to Jack McKeon and are excited to see someone of his age be able to achieve what he can. Then you have the South Beach set who relate to young guys like Beckett and (Dontrelle) Willis,” said Robert Tuchman, president of TSE Sports and Entertainment, a sports marketing company in New York.
“Except for New York, the whole nation fell in love with the Marlins for showing they can win with these youngsters. To have a manager that age and basically kids on the same team definitely increases their appeal, especially these days with the way the Yankees are gobbling up all the talent.”

Even MLB seems to realize they are on to something here:

“For the month of October, Josh Beckett captivated America. It’s our job to keep the spotlight on Josh,” said Jacqueline Parkes, an MLB senior vice president for marketing.
“He very much appeals to demographics we’re trying to bring into the game, (ages) 18 to 38. What better way to attract them than have someone who looks very much like them? Josh is a very down-to-earth guy who is exceedingly talented on the field, and he’s very relevant to target.”

One of the big complaints I’ve heard about MLB over the last decade or so is that they don’t market the most important part of their product, their players. A big reason for that was labor strife. Maybe with that somewhat settled, MLB will do more to entice fans to come out and see the stars of the game, rather than just the concept of baseball. It looks like that’s starting to happen.

This looks like good news for the business of baseball:

Major League Baseball officials announced on Monday that the league and its 30 teams will be guaranteed at least $500 million from 2005-2009, thanks to signing new contracts with its licensing partners.
Commissioner Bud Selig called the agreement “a manifestation as to how strong this sport really is.”
The guaranteed licensing money will be at least 70 percent more than MLB’s current deal, said Tim Brosnan, baseball’s executive vice president for business.

That’s a little over $3 million per year per team. Enough to pay for a few good young players.