I was scanning Phillies Reddit and noticed an interesting juxtaposition. These two photos, popping up next to each other in consecutive posts:

The first is from u/NorthCoastToast, a photo of Connie Mack Stadium around 1960 with the headline “I’m a bit surprised at the folks upset over ads on the outfield wall. Advertising hoardings in baseball stadiums are as old as the game itself.” The second is from u/Jay-Kane123, a photo of the Phillies’ new out of town scoreboard. “Good thing we got the electronic board along the right field wall, so now we can look at SEVEN different ads,” writes Jay.

One of the things people brought up in their lamentation of the scoreboard change was the thought that more advertising would be shoved down their throats, and that’s certainly what happened. Left to right, they fit Hatfield, Temple Health, Nemours, Rothman, Chick-fil-A, Herr’s, and Waste Management on there. Seven advertisements filling, by my estimation, 66% of the surface area in this particular instance. In the middle you see a Justin Wilson vs. Brandon Marsh statistical comparison.

The Connie Mack photo is a great throwback, and North Coast makes a good point – advertising has been part of baseball forever and nothing will change in that regard. That scoreboard had five ads, one that’s cut off in the image, but it’s Longines watches (top middle), Ballantine beer, the Yellow Pages, Taylor Ham or Pork Roll or whatever the fuck they call it in New Jersey, and a bank loan company. But in terms of size, the scoreboard dominates and is much larger than the combined ads.

I found another photo from the Society for American Baseball Research where you can see some of the ads that they used to have on the left field wall at Shibe/Connie Mack as well:

When you take the temperature of Phillies fans, by going through comments and replies, it seems like advertising is not necessarily the complaint, but it’s the presentation of the advertising, and the frequency of it. It’s a slippery slope or “where does it end?” type of concern. How many ads are too many? Where will they put them next? The Phillies don’t have a jersey patch yet, but you know they will, and it will cheapen the uniform. What? You think “QUIKRETE” looks good on the Atlanta jerseys? It looks hideous. There should be no advertising on any uniform, not IBX, not BIMBO, not certainly not Crypto.com. That’s another column that’s already been written.

Counterpoint, however –

You can’t spend stupid money that you don’t have, and if putting another divorce lawyer ad in right field is the difference in signing a good player or an average player, then let’s sign the contract. Get that domestic lititation signage mounted. I hope Rob Thomson goes to the postgame press conference like this guy:

via Twitter