Breaking Balls: My MasterCard Memorable Moment
by Derek Zumsteg
"Gehrig's farewell speech: selfless. Jackie Robinson's rookie year:
fearless. Carlton Fisk's game-winner: timeless. Our national pastime:
priceless."
The price of our national pastime, it turns out, is $40-$50 million, which is
how much MasterCard is spending on their 'MasterCard Presents Major League
Baseball Memorable Moments' campaign. I can't believe it's that low, considering
they've shown those commercials so frequently that I get nauseous looking at
that shot of Jackie Robinson. Keep in mind, Robinson is one of my favorite
baseball players, one whose autobiography I wore down reading repeatedly.
"Baseball supports our 'Priceless' positioning and our ad campaign. Our
brand is about authenticity, and baseball is about authenticity."
MasterCard's whole priceless campaign is the kind of vague brand-building
companies are into now. Pit-Pat, the pan-gender, non-threatening mascot ("Take
it from me... I love you!") had signed on elsewhere, so they had to go with a
bunch of vignettes with cheap actors. The result is the "priceless" campaign,
in which a series of consumer purchases become component pieces of an emotional
moment.
This does a couple of things for them. If you think of the end emotional state
as being beyond value, it doesn't matter what the price is on each thing. Want
to have a good time with your kids? Spend, spend, spend, and you'll have a great
moment. In fact, go on and collect all the priceless moments. It's only money.
Will paying off the card affect your ability to, say, feed, clothe, and care for
the little scamp? That's in the next commercial, for one of the many
non-profit-but-actually-for-profit debt management companies.
"This baseball promotion is truly a unique opportunity to reach the most
fervent and most casual of baseball fans. The concept of 'Memorable Moments' is
universal in that it touches nearly everyone who's ever come into contact with
the sport, across every generation."
It also ties all of the great qualities of those moments--courage in the face of
racism, triumph from defeat, respect and dignity in retirement--to the faceless
brand of MasterCard. Somehow, I guess, I'm supposed to look in my wallet and,
consciously or not, associate all my good baseball feelings (and none of the
awful, hopeless years of Mariner baseball) with the two-circles logo, and use
that. MasterCard takes its cut from the merchant, I become the victim of usury
almost immediately as a cost of convenience, and everyone wins. Except Visa.
The other thing this does for MasterCard is that it brands baseball's history.
Think about that: the very act of reminiscing about our sport has been tied
around a corporate brand. Instead of yarns about their time as players, or great
plays they'd seen as announcers, baseball broadcasts this year featured
commentary teams discussing their MasterCard Memorable Moments ballot.
I'd like to offer a moment. In college in 1993, I watched the Giants play a
late-season game as they were wrestling with Atlanta for the division title. I
was at my friend's apartment. We were prone to skipping classes and taking the
bus downtown to see Mariners games, but the NL West pennant race was the coolest
thing going. If I remember, it was October 3rd against the Dodgers, and for some
reason the game was on. We sat and watched the Giants play, and it turned into a
great game as only three Giants hitters--Will Clark, Matt Williams, and Barry
Bonds--powered the entire offense. Six outs, and then those three would put a
couple runs on the board. The other team would scratch out a run, threaten, but
those three kept hitting, determined they would live to play another game and
catch the Braves. And they did, working the pitchers over like determined,
intelligent players who wouldn't be denied.
The boxscore's not that impressive. It wasn't the most dramatic win or the best
pitching performance of the year. I remember the feeling of triumph, seeing my
favorite players, guys I'd been introduced to by my grandparents in Candlestick
Park years before and followed however I could since then. They carried their
team to a win with much better at-bats than their peers, and I knew that the
remaining days of the season would be amazing, too. And it was: the 1993 pennant
was the last great pennant race we'll ever see, between two great teams with no
prize for second place, the drama destroyed for the sake of three-division
leagues and the Wild Card.
"The 'MasterCard Presents Major League Baseball Memorable Moments'
program is the most significant marketing campaign ever initiated by Major
League Baseball and one of its business partners. This program will directly
engage our fans, as they will be able to determine the moments that will be
honored as the most memorable in Major League Baseball history."
Is my moment, sitting on the edge of a couch with a Giants cap on, hollering
until I was hoarse as my team refused to go down, determined to be unworthy of
memory because it wasn't on a ballot? It's certainly not going to get a lot of
votes, since baseball managed to chase my friend away in the last decade.
Every fan of baseball has memories like this. Memories are personal: infused
with meaning from what you bring to the games, who you're with, events in your
own life. They're not for sale, and that's why I'm offended by this campaign.
Voting doesn't determine anyone's most memorable moment. It solves nothing, but
the very process is just another part of the strip-mining of baseball, where ads
return to outfield walls, many teams sell their medical care (and the health of
their players) as an endorsement deal for local providers, and there's nothing
sacred, or too important, that it can't be bought and paid for. Every moment is
already branded. The home runs are the Random Airline Trip of the Day, a
defensive play becomes a LeechChemicalCo Turf Defender Lawn Fertilizer Play. If
thinking about baseball's rich and storied past is a commercial act, done at the
behest of an advertising campaign, why not have ads on uniforms? Why not put
company logos on the outfield grass?
Baseball wants to make money. It's a business, I understand. But while I've
grown accustomed to the constant branding of everything around us, I'm saddened
that baseball saw fit to buy and appropriate the memories of every fan, and hold
them up to be judged as right or wrong in a balloting process.
"Baseball appreciates what we do for the game and we benefit from
baseball."
My MasterCard Memorable Moment is when baseball sold its history for a couple
million dollars.
Derek Zumsteg is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact him by
clicking here.
-- MasterCard Presents Major League Baseball Memorable Moments advertisement
-- Bob Cramer, Vice President, Global Sponsorships and Event Marketing, MasterCard
International
-- Cramer
--Tim Brosnan, Executive Vice President, Business, Major League Baseball
-- Cramer