Over the years, minor league teams have tried just about everything to get butts into their ballparks. Fake Tim Tebows, nun massages, Mike Vick doggy toys, you name it - a minor league team will give away anything in order to gain some publicity and sell some tickets. It’s not all Mike Veeck’s fault, but the minor league mogul has been behind some of the more out-there promotions over the years at the St. Paul Saints and other, even more obscure teams.

(It’s a conspiracy!)

But at least two minor league baseball teams are discovering that a team doesn’t have to push the boundaries of sanity, good taste, and intellectual property to get people excited about a promotion. Americans, as it turns out, are a simple folk, motivated by the chance to see hundred-year-old technology and, of course, candy.

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When I was younger one of the things I would always do before the baseball season started was check out the local convenience stores to find one of those pocket schedules.  I didn’t want them so I could know who the White Sox were playing when because I could just look in a newspaper to figure that out.  No, the reason I wanted the schedule was because it had a list of all the promotions and giveaways the team was doing during the season.  What’s that?  They’re handing out beach towels on June 15th?  I like the beach and I can’t go to the beach without a beach towel!  I’m gonna ask my dad if we can go to that game.

Of course, times have changed since I was a kid.  I no longer care about the promotions, though I still don’t mind free stuff, so my decisions on which games to attend generally have more to do with the game itself.  At the same time, with the economy in the shape it is at the moment free stuff has never been more important.  The problem is if you don’t have a job you can’t really afford to buy tickets to a game just to get a bobblehead doll.   Well, that is, unless your a New Jersey Nets fan.

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