On KIRO 710 radio today I heard about Major League Baseball selling some controversial ad space. The Star Tribune says:

In the latest example of a sponsor’s stamp on the sports world, ads for the movie “Spider-Man 2” will be placed atop bases at 15 major league ballparks during games from June 11-13.

Then I read more of these articles and said to myself, hey it’s only 3 days, it’s not like they are going NASCAR or anything. But this does open up the doorway to your local indian casino on every basepath. I wonder if this will be — or could become — distracting for the umpires. That would be one good reason to not do this. But for the people outraged by this, please, this is only for 3 days and unless they are doing closeups on the bases (which with all the exposure this is getting they will) it would go largely unnoticed. It’s not even comparable to Marlboro or Winston logos on cars at tracks or the NASCAR interviews where the driver’s keep switching hats with sponsor logos during the interview.

Or have I got this all wrong and this is the beginning of the end for baseball between the lines turning into the sporting equivalent of the net’s popup advertisements?