Caught in the advertising web.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: Sports Biz

THOSE OF US WHO GREW UP AS DEVOTEES OF STAN LEE'S Spiderman found it disheartening that a superhero who has held his own since 1962 against seriously evil cats like Venom and Green Goblin couldn't muster a better fight against baseball's scrawny commissioner.

Back in May, with his second major motion picture about to debut courtesy of Columbia-TriStar Pictures, the web-slinger backed off like a second-rate foe from a clever plan to infiltrate the playing surfaces of Major League Baseball parks. Apparently his spidey sense told him the better part of valor was to leave his imprint off the hallowed reserves of first, second and third base, and instead to show his image only timidly over by the on-deck circles during interleague games from June 11-13. This, from a guy who backs down neither from raging alien symbionts nor maniacal, voltage-spewing cads. C'mon, Spidey: Bud Selig couldn't go two solid rounds with Dr. Ruth. Your refusal to take a firmer stand here is the superhero equivalent of letting Doctor Octopus have his way with Mary Jane Watson while you enjoy a frosty one over by the campus.

But then again, the winds of sensitivity were blowing against you. Selig's swift and decisive ruling (when's the last time those words commingled in a single sentence?) followed a thundering chorus of resentment from baseball purists, writers and, surprisingly, common fans, over the idea that the game's pristine white bases would be sullied by the red and blue visage of our revered webslinger for a couple of days. I say "surprising," because you'd think by now the modernera sports fan is about as sensitive to the intrusion of advertising into the game as he is to overpaying for a Coors Light.

If the suits at Columbia-TriStar were privately seething over baseball's rebuke, you could hardly blame them. After all, the dominating presence of advertising in arenas and stadiums is by now old hat, even in the purist's domain that is baseball. Locally, a plaid-suit collision of signage and logotypes festoons the upper decks at Coors Field, and from August through December, Invesco Field is a virtual shrine to modern marketing, with nary a fallow moment allowed to occur before loudspeakers blast out ads, and TV commercials spill forth in Orwellian grandeur from the video screen that towers above the south stands. You want to see the ultimate economic bargain between corporate branding and sports? Take yourself out to Talladega or...