Athletics & Giants: A Cold Case

I was watching a late night re run of Cold Case. The victim was a disc jockey in 1958 who believed in rock and roll. He refused to accept payola, but pressure was put upon him to take bribes to play certain songs on the air. In one scene in which the record company representative was exerting his influence, the DJ told the guy that people like him take something that is true and good and turn it into tinsel (N.B. The ex-wife actually did it). In recent posts I have complained about marketing types for the Athletics and Giants who have taken something that is true and good (I know there are scandals in baseball) and ruined it. My specific complaint was either mindless or jinxing noise out of the stadium loudspeakers. Nice to see some art form comment on this also.

San Franciso Giants Jinx Themselves

In today's San Francisco Chronicle, Henry Schulman described the scene at last night's San Francisco Giants game versus the San Diego Padres. He said that before the game a Comcast promotion was broadcast in the stadium which loudly proclaimed, “'Will this be the night the Giants pop the Champagne corks?'” This was opposed to all baseball etiquette and certainly jinxed the team last night. I assume that whoever was in charge of the intra stadium broadcast was some sort of marketing type who tried to drum up phony enthusiasm. Over one hundred years of baseball tradition dictated against this. It sent a message to the fans and maybe even the players that the Giants were entitled to the Western Division Pennant. The Giants were facing a team with which they have had trouble all season. Instilled over confidence was a poor choice. I complained about the noise level at an Oakland Athletics game recently. This was just mindless, irritating blare. In this case, there was also really terrible content. Whoever devised that announcement and the Giants official that approved it should be hanged from the highest yardarm.