Baseball Gear for the Kellyanne Conway Crowd

by Jason Franz

“Carhartt and '47. Two family-run companies, celebrating the unbreakable bond that exists between workers and their hometowns across the nation. Find your MLB team, in your style, wherever you're from.”

It’s amazing how everyone is looking to exploit the income of middle America. Just this week, ABC gave us the return of Roseanne to the highest ratings of any show since 2014, with the central character as much of a loudmouth Trump supporter as the…ahem…actress who portrays her. You remember Roseanne Barr, great American patriot and respectful singer of the National Anthem:



Now Major League Baseball is jumping on this "true America" bandwagon, allowing merchandise licensing to those two great American companies who are hawking caps starting at $30 a pop. What a deal for the segment of our great nation whose average household income hovers near $55,000. Because another cap is what every red-blooded American worker needs.

This blatant product pandering sits right up there with Budweiser’s rebranding their beer cans “America” in the summer of 2016. And that actually led to a 5% DECREASE in sales. Of course, that so-called beer is crap, which might have a little something to do with that.

As my colleague Neal Pollack pointed out to me this afternoon, targeting marketing at a middle to lower class segment of the American population is nothing new for pro sports. Both the MLB and NBA have Hispanic and Latino themed promotions. The Padres and Diamondbacks have military themed days. The entire league will honor Mother's Day and Father's Day and Jackie Robinson Day and Independence Day. The common link across each of these promotions is that each has its own gear for fans to buy, furthering the souvenir sales for these pauper ballclub owners.

But these hats Carhartt/'47 hats are something different.

Have you been to an MLB team shop lately? The Arizona Diamondbacks have at least two full walls and multiple kiosks dedicated to headwear. Authentic team issue, special editions, blinged, camo, minor league affiliates, cartoons, whathaveyou. Hell, their online store alone has 207 different hat options. But hey, thanks to this great new American partnership targeting the heartland of America, you now have three more.

The thing that's so wrong with these specific caps is that, like the Budweiser debacle, you now have a product trading on the nationalistic fervor that's already blasting this country apart. "celebrating the unbreakable bond that exists between workers and their hometowns across the nation"??? You can't get more overt than that. But hey, at least we know Carhartt and '47 along with MLB are trying to sell you a product. It's not like the Department of Defense secretly using $53million in taxpayer funds to pay 50 teams from across six pro sports leagues to wear camo gear, play patriotic songs and honor the military. That's not manipulative at all.

Look, whatever. America is a nation of consumers and consumerism. If a company wants to make hats and sell them and that public shows there’s a demand and wants to buy them, great. That’s the American way. But does baseball need to blatantly appeal to a political sensibility that is already ripping their fans apart?

Apparently so. #sad