A minor in marketing.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: Sports Biz

SOME WELL-DESERVING COLORADO SPRINGS WOMEN WERE enjoying deep-muscle massages and sipping inexpensive drinks the other night when suddenly a baseball game broke out.

Thankfully, there were no reports of injuries or spilled beverages, and the proprietors at least had the common courtesy to restore order by giving away a free diamond.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Welcome to Security Service Field: home of used-car giveaways, prolific fireworks, 20-cent chicken wings, free massages, contests that dare you to golf a whiffle ball from atop the third-base dugout, $9 box seats, a hot tub percolating over right field, and free tickets for dogs.

Security Service Field is home to the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, the triple-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. If you haven't been there, imagine Coors Field, except that the seats are blue instead of green, there are about 32,000 fewer of them, and instead of giving away perfectly sensible gifts like tote bags, they give away things like ... cars. (Kid you not: One per inning during the July 9 "Used Car Giveaway" game.)

Go to a Sky Sox game and you won't just catch a glimpse of rising stars like Albuquerque's Matt Padgett, who's tearing up the Pacific Coast League. You'll also get a taste of wanton sports-industry hucksterism.

From Buffalo, N.Y., where the Buffalo Bisons play their home games, to Portland, Ore, (the Beavers), minor-league ball is enjoying a popularity boom that is partly attributable to sheer marketing lunacy.

Minor league baseball marketers make no apologies for adorning Abner Doubleday's game with gimmicks like last July's "Richard Nixon Bobblehead Night," wherein New Hampshire's Nashua Pride honored the 32nd anniversary of the Watergate break-in by giving away Nixon dolls, allowing free admission to anyone with a surname of Woodward or Bernstein, and asking fans to join in 18 1/2 minutes of silence--a homage to the infamous gap in a taped Nixon conversation.

That promotion might not play terribly well in conservative-minded Colorado Springs, but the man with the job of dreaming up wacky stunts to bring in fans for the Sky Sox has no problem pilfering other good ideas.

"The beauty of minor league baseball is that we're all part of the same family, and we help each other," says Rai Henniger, a Sky Sox senior vice president and minor-league baseball veteran executive who was the MVP for his senior high-school baseball team in Hawaii. Henniger borrowed the idea for the Sox...