Singular Honeydrippers

The green retro scoreboard asserts the score:

DBacks Game 1

Chick Flicks   0

This cheeky result appeared in my Sunday paper, within yet another season ticket ad, further clarifying Diamondbacks' two pronged marketing strategy: misrepresent the product and shame people into buying it.   

We previously chronicled a similar home mailing targeted at fathers' insecurites; today's 14 inch ad shows a couple, their features dramatically darkened just shy of silhouette, overlooking a distant Chase Field. The ad's shading is a masterful device, clearly projecting the body language and facial expressions of a man and a woman, while obscuring their race and ethnicity. In other words, whether you are Anglo, Hispanic, African or Asian, this could be you!

The young woman in the ad is smiling, looking up adoringly at her "guy" a la Nancy Reagan. She is leaning into him, her chin almost on his shoulder. Season Ticket Man is smiling back. A kiss seems imminent. Perhaps even a condom.

And with good reason. He has jettisoned "chick flicks" and imposed his manly will upon her - and the little woman is positively dewy about it. Why, how could a gal ever sit through another Hugh Grant or Brad Pitt blockbuster when Randy Johnson and Chris Snyder are this close?

The ad further instructs:   

Put away the tissues and come out to the ballgame.

Seems like alot to ask of those who've actually sat through a summer in Chase's top deck, where this fictional couple is also, apparently, in heat. After trekking to the stadium in 110 degrees, braving the steep climb up to allegedly air conditioned seats, any dripping fan can identify the true source of this young lady's moisture.

Perhaps the most misleading aspect of the ad, however, is here:  

DBacks Game 1

Chick Flicks   0

Oh, the exploitation of young men's sexual insecurities is clear enough, and we're not even referring to the subtle but false promise of old time charm suggested by the Fenwayesque, manual scoreboard. What caught our eye was how the allegedly good thing, the Dbacks game, is singular and that which is to be avoided is plural. The authentic, real world choice between "a" ballgame and "a" movie has been distorted here into a false challenge: assert one's manhood with "1 game" or eternally wallow, fettered and emasculated, in a perfumed sea of "chick flicks".

What's misleading further - and borderline fraudulent - is that this isnt an ad for a ballgame, but rather for season ticket packages - where "Dbacks Games" makes perfect sense and "Dbacks Game 1" perfectly does not. This is another purposeful contrivance.  Ballsy Diamondbacks' brass apparently lack sufficient cajones to openly market a boatload of ballgames versus a bunch of movies. Instead, under the guise of singularity, they're selling quite a long term committment - without honesty, courage or even the appropriate moisture to seal the deal.