Sports Radio Service


		Enjoy your empty ball parks after the fire sale By Joe Salvatore July 24, 2008

	SAN FRANCISCO--When you look back on some of the past promotions that the A's and Giants had back in the 80's there were differences in their marketing drives. In 1985 the Giants tried to promote "real baseball" by playing 61 day games out of 82 home dates thinking that would bring more people out than playing at night in the cold and the fog even so the Giants wound up losing over 100 games. It was bad baseball but it was a time when the Giants tried to get people out to Candlestick and tried to show that the team could play baseball in the day in more pleasant conditions. The A's promoted their team based on gimmicks, dot racing, like the elephant ride for kids, and the A's had all that and had shown all the stuff that was not on the field. The A's idea that they ran in that campaign and they tried to concentrate on baseball no matter how bad it was and they tried to make the Coliseum into entertainment facility and now it kind of changed if you look at the way things are at AT&T. AT&T is very entertainment driven and not what’s going on the field but what’s going on off it. Which might be a good thing. So things have kind of turned in the last 20 plus years where the Coliseum has more die hard baseball fans that go to Oakland, where at AT&T it's the place to be seen in being at the ball park, this being the chic place to be as oppose to the Coliseum which more a blue collar type crowd. It's kind of interesting how the two crowds and the two fan bases have kind of changed. Some of the Giants promotion slogans that were used over the years were, 1979 "Take a Giant step and go" which was also used for a couple of years, in 1986 "You got to like these kids", in 1987 "Humm baby", in 1989 "I feel good", 1988 was "Let's do it again". A lot of credit for these famous promotions go to team Vice President Pat Gallagher which were creative, the commercials for radio and TV were creative, and also the Croix de Candlestick pins were a desired item after extra innings and fans loved them and they were all a creation of Gallagher's. Gallagher did the best he could to make a bad situation better for the Giants marketing department because former owner Bob Lurie would bad mouth Candlestick every step and that he could and made your job kind of difficult if your trying to market the club. When your owner is not exactly supportive about the ball park it made the job challenging for Gallagher who did as good a job as anybody in baseball in trying to get people to come out in a bad situation. A's and Giants fire sale in July: For both teams pretty much coming into the season if you talk to A's General Manager Billy Beane and your expecting the A's to contend and chase the Angels in the American League West this was suppose to be a semi rebuilding year. In the trades the Giants made in the off season. The A's dealt Marco Scutaro last season and of course Dan Haren and Nick Swisher, then Rich Hardin went on the D.L. for a month and Hardin was much more impressive than even the A's thought at this stage in his career and he kind of hit a wall over the last month or so. Hardin did get off to a great start and he lead the majors in ERA for most of the first half of the season and they have played very well their eight games about .500 but it's a been a problem the last couple years with the A's. Injuries took its toll they lost a lot of key offensive players; there's Eric Chavez who tried to come back from three surgeries from the off season. The A's tried to sign Frank Thomas and the Blue Jays let him go and then he ended up tearing a quad muscle and he's missed the last eight to nine weeks of the season. So pitching wise the A's are fine even after the trade of Rich Hardin and Joe Blanton. It's just the fact the Giants can't score runs and the A's management knew that this was going to be a rough season to begin with. The A's played above their heads in the first two months and now were going to start seeing players being dealt before next week's deadline. In Oakland a number of scouts have looking at Huston Street the A's closer who hasn't pitched well in the last three or four weeks. They have studied his velocity of his arm angle and it's not what they hoped for so it's going to be interesting to see what clubs do as they get towards July 31st and how desperate they get for bull pen help. Alan Embree the A's reliever throws 90-95 MPH he's an option and he's someone that could be available. It's going to be growing pains for the A's they were obviously getting younger and stocking up on prospects in the farm system for those trades before December which has been pretty barren for the A's. Joe Salvatore contributes to Sportstalk Radio and covers baseball religiously.