Spider-Man and Major League Baseball

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Baseball Gets Spidey Cents
"Now standing on second Spider-Man: Barry Bonds..."

That play-by-play call probably won't happen, but it could after Major League Baseball struck a reported $3.6 million deal with Sony's Columbia Pictures to promote Spider-Man 2 in its ballparks--and on its base paths.

As announced Wednesday, logos for the big-budget sequel will be stuck on pitching rubbers, on-deck batting circles and, most controversial of all, bases in big-league stadiums from June 11-13, heretofore to be known as Spider-Man 2 Weekend.

Fourteen major-league clubs plus the lowly Kansas City Royals, who we guess technically still play in the American League, will play host to the promotional effort. Every team reputedly will net between $50,000-$125,000 for their part in the pact with Satan.

The New York Yankees, for whom $100,000 probably doesn't even qualify as lunch per diem, are the one team so far to cry foul over the plan. George Steinbrenner's club, whose players wore giant Ricoh patches/billboards on their vaunted pinstripes for a special opening-week series in Japan, will display the Spidey bases, each featuring a red, diamond-sized movie logo, only before the game and not during play at the House That Ruth Built and That Peter Parker Is Not Really Welcome In.

Additionally, the web-slinging superhero will not be allowed to attach his likeness or logo to the Bronx Bombers' pitching mound.

"We try to work with Major League Baseball," club executive Lonn Trost said in the New York Daily News. "But if we think it's something that's not good for the Yankees or Yankee Stadium, we're not going to do it."

Calls to an MLB spokeswoman for comment on the Yankees' rebel stance was not returned Thursday.

Others are having little trouble expressing their opinions about baseball's Spidey sense, or relative lack thereof.

"Personally, I'm not thrilled about it. I think it's a little tacky," said Jeffrey Santaite, president of the Professional Baseball Fans Association.

Still, Santaite said he understands in-stadium, even in-game, advertising is the way business is done today.

"Probably [there's] a certain line that it would become a distraction," Santaite said. "I don't necessarily think on a base it would become a distraction."

Don't tell that to ESPN.com columnist Eric Neel. "Apparently, running the Expos isn't embarrassing enough," Neel wrote of the Spider-Man 2 deal. "It's a money grab. It's gluttony. It's Gordon Gecko and his slick-back 'do spouting off on the virtues of greed."

Cleveland Indians first baseman Travis Hafner tried to find the web's silver lining. "Maybe we can forget our uniforms and wear Spider-Man outfits," he told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. "It may help me steal a base. I can just shoot a web out of my sleeve in the direction of second base."

For the record, the Spidey deal is not meant to serve the players, but Sony, which wants kids to know that its summer blockbuster starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst is opening June 30, and baseball, which wants kids to know that its game is way cooler than stupid ol' basketball and football no matter what those Mike Ditka ads for erectile dysfunction say.

While movie ads on bases are new, movie ads in ballparks are not. Posters are routinely superimposed behind batters on local and national TV broadcasts. Other promo efforts are even slicker. Last year, for example, Los Angeles' Dodgers Stadium worked in virtual commercials for the likes of The Matrix Reloaded and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines on its outfield big screen in the guise of meet-the-players featurettes.

In the end, fan-booster Santaite said the baseball purist is not going to take well to the game's latest advertising innovation. And in the end, the game's latest advertising innovation isn't going change at least one fan's summer movie-going plans.

"I didn't like Spider-Man, so having it on second base is not going to make me want to see [the sequel]," Santaite said.

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