Minor league baseball is a strange, wonderful and sometimes dangerous place. In a sport of time-honored rules, there is little to no governance over the promotions a team can present. The only rules are bound by good taste.
That’s the problem.
For the second time in two years, a Utah minor league baseball team is in the news after being linked to insensitive promotions.
Remember when the San Diego Chicken was all the entertainment you could get?
Most of the time, MiLB promotions consist of harmless lampooning. The Lowell Spinners held “Political Correctness Night,” in which players were referred to as “basepersons” and errors went unidentified, to avoid offending anyone. “Mike Tyson Ear Night” — referencing the famous fight with Evander Holyfield — was the brainchild of the Fort Myers Miracle.
Dave Baggott, co-owner/president of the Ogden Raptors, staged “IOC Bribery Night,” in which fans got in free if they produced a sheet with a written lie on it.
Those things can be funny and not particularly damaging.
“I don’t know,” Baggott said at the time. “Even I might have to learn the borders of good taste.”
National writers addressed what appeared to be a proposed news release from the Raptors promoting an Aug. 11 “Hourglass Appreciation Night.” A screenshot posted on Twitter by a New York Daily News writer said, “The home team hosts the Billings Mustangs, but the real thoroughbreds will join Raptors broadcaster A.P. Harreld in the booth. Since August is the eighth month of the calendar year, and an 8 looks tantalizingly similar to an hourglass, be there a better way to remind the world that baseball needs no clock than to feature 18 hourglass-shaped color commentators?”
A link to the release on the MiLB/Raptors website has been removed.
The screenshot said a Salt Lake talent studio would “provide a different stunner each half-inning. And the Raptors will video-stream the broadcast booth — well, at least the better-looking half of it!”
It concluded, “Fans will have the opportunity to pose for pictures with the lovely ladies as we showcase seriously splendid visual appeal: Utah’s legendary mountains, Dodgers and Reds farmhands — and gorgeous women whose curves rival those of any stud pitching prospect!”
Time to call in relief.
Tuesday morning, Baggott issued an official release.
“The Ogden Raptors regret that an unauthorized press release was disseminated over the weekend announcing a promotion that was not approved or scheduled by club ownership or management. This promotion will not take place and steps have been put in place to ensure this will not happen again.”
Baggott apologized to fans and stated the Raptors would not be conducting media interviews.
What “unauthorized” means is unclear. It’s hard to imagine a veteran promoter such as Baggott would miss the red flags. Texted earlier Tuesday about “whether (the promotion) is still on,” Baggott replied it “is not on as it was never planned or scheduled.”
In 2015, the Orem Owlz announced a “Caucasian Heritage Night” on their schedule. It planned to lampoon white culture, but drew national scorn. The team media director/announcer quit after the story mushroomed.
“They did the right thing to cancel,” Baggott said at the time, “but they’re not bad people.”
Neither are the Raptors, but somehow they got in a similar situation.
Baggott is no neophyte. He arrived to play with the Salt Lake Trappers in 1986, at age 23, and stayed in Utah. If anyone knows the promotions business is a minefield, it’s him. He worked briefly for the Trappers, then moved the team to Ogden, where he turned rookie league baseball into a popular event. The Raptors have led the Pioneer League in attendance each of the last 12 years.
In that sense, it seems unlikely he would have approved the “Hourglass” promotion. His Tuesday news release offered “a sincere apology to anyone who was offended by the promotion itself and the contents of the press release.” The screenshot included animated art of bikini-clad women, but not the Raptors logo.
In three decades of promotions, Baggott has made a lot of people genuinely laugh. That won’t change as long as he’s around. Jimmy Buffett nights, hair band nights and mullet nights are fine. But nights evaluating women’s bodies?
Don’t even think it.
“We try to pick and choose what’s in good taste — and sometimes if it’s not in good taste, we’ll do it anyway,” Baggott said in 2015.
In this case, the promotion may never have happened. But the blowback did, without even turning on the stadium lights.