For some Brewers fans, promotional giveaway items are as much a draw to the ballpark as the team itself. The annual reveal of the upcoming promotional schedule has become a major event of the offseason and does much to generate a social media buzz. There are 17 giveaways scheduled for 2016, meaning that for almost one-fifth of the home schedule, everyone in attendance goes home with something more than just the thrill of learning to pronounce Kirk Nieuwenhuis’ name.
It wasn’t always this way, of course. The idea of bribing people with free stuff to watch your team play baseball was once seen as a kind of a bush-league gimmick. When the Braves played in Milwaukee, there were no giveaway days at all, their promotions consisting mostly of “Ladies’ Days” when women were admitted free. The bulk of the early Brewers giveaways were targeted at kids. By the mid-1970s, plastic batting helmet, windbreaker and cap giveaways had become annual events at the stadium, sometimes drawing more children to the park than adults.
The earliest adult giveaways were pretty bland, limited to plastic coffee mugs and seat cushions for most of the 1970s and early 1980s. Beer coolers, sponsored by Miller Lite, were introduced in the mid-’80s, along with an expansion of kids’ freebies. The first kids’ glove day was held in 1985 and was an annual promo through 1989. Baseball cards, pencil kits, digital watches, growth charts and the like remained common items for kids through the 1990s. Adults got golf umbrellas, coolers and beach towels.
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A few items in the early 1990s did, however, begin to hint at the future of the SGA (stadium giveaway), wherein the promo began to overshadow the game. On May 12, 1991, the Brewers gave away a variety of Kenner Starting Lineup figures to kids 14 and under. The giveaway didn’t do much for attendance (it was under 16,000) but was the first promotion involving something intended to be a collector’s item. The first SGA to cause a serious attendance boost took place a year later, when the team gave away a free Robin Yount collector’s book (retail cost: $19.99) to everyone who attended the final home game of the season. The Brewers were in a tight race with the Blue Jays at the time, only 2.5 games out of first place in the AL East, but the book giveaway drew about 11,000 more fans to the park than the team expected.
The next major SGA also involved Yount—a VHS tape honoring his career handed out on “Robin Yount day” in 1994. Later that season, the team handed out Yount “Coinsaver” phone cards before his number retirement ceremony, yet another attempt to draw fans to the park with a collector’s item.
In 1998, the team jumped on another collectables trend and offered a Beanie Baby giveaway—“Batty” the bat—followed in 1999 by “Early” the Robin. With the closing of County Stadium, the team tailored its SGA offerings and gave away some of the most unique items to date, including a County Stadium board game, snow globe and a Bernie’s Chalet coin bank. In Miller Park’s debut year, glove day returned and a Miller Park snow globe was offered.
Then, on June 17, 2001, the SGA game in Milwaukee changed forever. With the Brewers hosting Kansas City Royals, the team held the first-ever bobblehead giveaway. Geoff Jenkins was the first Brewer to be memorialized in bobble form as his somewhat squat and grinning visage was given away to the first 10,000 fans 14 and under. At the time, it was not clear that the bobble craze would be any longer lasting than the Beanie Baby fury of a few years prior. The first bobble giveaway was held by the San Francisco Giants in 1999 and by the time the Jenkins doll was handed out, 20 teams had bobble days on the schedule.
The following year, the team offered three more bobbles—then-current stars Richie Sexson and Ben Sheets and Hall of Famer Henry Aaron—each offered to the first 10,000 fans 14 and under. As the secondary market for these items surged, the Brewers were well aware that many, if not most, of the kids attending the bobble games were little more than vessels for which to acquire the doll for a parent to resell. In 2003, the bobble promotion was expanded to all fans, as the team offered figures of the racing sausages, Paul Molitor and (weeks after he’d already been released by the team) outfielder Jeffrey Hammonds.
Bobblehead giveaways have since become a staple of nearly every team’s schedule. The Brewers have been something of a leader in the field. In 2007, the team declared itself as the bobblehead giveaway champions of the world by offering 18 different all-fan bobble giveaways, including a series of mini-bobbles on Friday games to commemorate the 1982 AL pennant team. With bobblemania, the old days of the cheap and gaudy digital watch or painter’s cap kids’ promos have given way to SGAs being used as a sophisticated part of team branding and identity. With expectations for the work-in-progress 2016 Brewers pretty low, the free stuff at the gate has become a bigger part of the team’s promotion than the players themselves. Eight different T-shirts, six bobbleheads, a bobble dog and a Bob Uecker talking alarm clock will be offered this season.
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“Our critics have called baseball promotions ‘gimmicks,’” Bud Selig told the Milwaukee Journal back in 1976 when they wrote about the Brewers’ increasing use of giveaways to lure fan. “The days are over when fans will relate only to a team’s performance on the field.” Indeed.
Read more chapters of Brewers history every week at the Brew Crew Confidential blog at shepherdexpress.com
