MLB orders Yankees to 'cease and desist' after seeing new stadium beer
Beer and baseball go together like peanut butter and jelly, so when the New York Yankees’ vending partners created some innovative new ways to sell brews to thirsty fans, the team thought it had a home run on its hands.
Unfortunately for the team and for the Blue Point Brewery, which runs a beer stand in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium, Major League Baseball called a foul ball on the idea.
See, Blue Point has a nifty little gizmo called “Beer Ripples” that can create images in the foam of a beer. It could be a logo or anything, but the company chose images of the Yankees’ players for its new Pinstripe Pilsner beer.
After all, if you’re sitting way out in the seats where home run balls from the likes of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton might land in your beer, why not have images of Judge and Stanton already there?
This is pretty incredible. @BluePointBrewer at @yankeestadium is printing players’ faces on beer this season (also coffee and some food). @TheJudge44, @ElGarySanchez, @Giancarlo818 and @AChapman_105 are loaded into the system already with more to come. #Yankees pic.twitter.com/FlybIy6bTj
— Jeff Eisenband (@JeffEisenband) March 26, 2018
Also available: Gary Sanchez and Aroldis Chapman, and with the technology, Blue Point could easily adapt on the fly to any Yankees player present or future who made a splash during the season.
The machine itself is a sleek bit of cool-looking tech sure to be a fan favorite as well:
We demand that all beer be served this way. @Yankees pic.twitter.com/6K9wOfcjTt
— Blue Point Brewing (@BluePointBrewer) March 26, 2018
The use of player images is where the beer and MLB came to a head.
The league has rules against active players being used to sell alcohol, and sensibly so; plenty of young kids look up to baseball players, and even the appearance of encouraging underage drinking would be a public relations nightmare.
A spokesman for the maker of Beer Ripples denied involvement, saying, “Ripples is the company behind Beer Ripples, the device that can print any image, picture or message onto beer. We are currently working with Legends, the company that runs the food and concessions stands at Yankee Stadium, who are in the process of testing a number of Beer Ripples machines. Ripples, however, was not involved with this particular activation.’’
Ripples’ first use of the technology was in the making of coffee machines that could replicate the designs normally only available at coffee shops into homebrewed joe.
MLB and even the Yankees themselves were not completely in the loop about what was going on at the media event where these images were unveiled.
“We were unaware’’ of the images, a spokesman for MLB said Tuesday. “We spoke to the club, the club wasn’t aware, either. To the best of our knowledge, they have told them it’s not authorized, to cease doing it.’’
The Yankees’ own spokesman continued, “Our hospitality team took Monday’s event as an opportunity to test the image machine with various Yankees-related logos and photos. However, the Yankees have no current plans of incorporating this decorative element on concessions items this season.”
So it turns out that this may have been much ado about nothing. Player images make a cool proof-of-concept, but there’s a big difference between “Hey, look what our machine can do” and “We’re going to sell this at games.”
Besides, there are plenty of ways a beer printer can create images that don’t violate MLB’s rules, from images of the stadium to the Yankees’ own logo to even something as prosaic as a simple picture of a baseball.
Blue Point Brewery booked its own seat on the Denial Express, saying via a spokesman for the Brooklyn-based Praytell agency that “Blue Point doesn’t actually do anything with that, we just brew the beer, we sell it at the Stadium. At certain stations at Yankee Stadium they have a machine that will allow you to put the Yankees players’ faces on the beer.
“If MLB and the Yankees have killed it, it’s done.’’
So you may be able to enjoy an ice-cold Blue Point beer at the Blue Point Bleachers Bar at the stadium, but you’ll have to watch the game to see the faces of the players.
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