Ads in the Ivy?!
I may be an A’s fan, but my favorite place to watch a ballgame is Wrigley Field. I’ve been there for half a dozen games, and every time I walk through the gates I feel like I’m entering a very special place. When you first emerge from below the stands, and get a glimpse of the famous ivy, the feeling is confirmed.
Wrigley Field is one of the hallowed locations in all of baseball. It transcends the sport, to the point where you could claim that it’s an important part of American culture. The ivy is the hallmark of the place, the signature and defining feature of the greatest of all sports venues. Planted by Bill Veeck over 70 years ago, it — like the game itself — endures.
Having said that, when I read this article about the Tribune Company plotting to disgrace the ivy with ads for Under Armour, I was disgusted. Absolutely and completely disgusted.
In this critical column by the Tribune’s own Paul Sullivan, the Cubs ad spokesman Jay Blunk states that this is just the latest in a series of small changes made to Wrigley.
Cubs marketing director Jay Blunk said the skyrocketing cost of player salaries necessitated the change, though he knows the decision may upset traditionalists.
“Our track record with the subtle changes, year after year, speaks for itself,” Blunk said. “Going all the way back to the lights, the skyboxes, the rotational signage in 2004 behind the plate, the dugout signage, which we started in 2000, and all the subtle changes we’ve done to update Wrigley Field and keep Wrigley Field from becoming financially obsolete.
There are so many things wrong with that line of thinking… I don’t think adding advertising to Wrigley “updates” the park in any way, or at least not in a positive one. Also, I highly doubt that Wrigley Field is going to become “financially obsolete” if Blunk doesn’t plaster ads all over it.
Why do people come to Wrigley? It’s not for the team on the field, which of late has been awful. They fill Wrigley every single day because it’s a wonderful place. Blunk and company are doing all they can to gradually destroy that. Step by step, the Tribune Company is warping Wrigley into a standardized ad-filled park.
Blunk tries to justify his company’s poor judgement by dragging Fenway into the mix. They “argue the Boston Red Sox’s owners have made substantial changes the last few years to historic Fenway Park, including putting fans on top of and ads on the Green Monster, the park’s iconic left-field wall.”
Not really. For years, there were ads all over the Green Monster. Look at this photo from 1942:
For a time, the Red Sox removed the ads, but brought them back recently, in a smaller format. Wrigley has never had an outfield wall obscured by ads since the ivy went in. Am I so wrong in thinking that it should remain that way?
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Former National Poet Laureate Ted Kooser once wrote about something he called “wolf sight”. He explained that for most people, if you gradually changed one thing about their environment every day, they wouldn’t notice. Over the course of a decade or two, you could slip anything by them. If you changed something too quickly, however, it would immediately be noticed. Ads in the ivy are that change that will get noticed.
If this comes to pass without complaint from everyday fans, who knows what will come next? Will they replace the hand-operated scoreboard with a video screen? Will the ivy be replaced by artificial foliage? Will they tear the place down and build a new park?
In twenty years, if people stop and wonder why anyone once viewed Wrigley as the gem of ballparks, we’ll know how it got to that point. Decisions such as this one.
You may ask yourself, why am I getting worked up over this? Isn’t this a minor decision by the Cubs executives, not to be worried over or hardly noticed? My answer is simple. Wrigley belongs not to the Tribune Company, but to all true baseball fans. The Tribune Co. is simply a custodian, entrusted with the maintenance and preservation of Wrigley. In my opinion, they are beginning to whore out one of the most beautiful man-made places in America, and we need to take a stand now. It’s a slippery slope, and we’re at the precipice. The ivy needs to be the breaking point.