In major league baseball, the period between 1946 and the early 1980s represented the Era of the Barnums, when certain inspired owners and executives raised to an artform the use of promotions to increase attendance at ballgames. This book highlights the thirteen most outrageous promotions in major league history. These promotions go far beyond giving away some outlandish Hawaiian shirt or unique bobblehead. The promotions covered herein involved a battle with weapons between baseball players and fans, children running willy-nilly around a baseball field, naked fans running the bases, drunken fans trashing baseball fields, fans dismantling a stadium while a game is ongoing, fans managing a game from the stands, women parading in wet T-shirts, mass marriages, the Beatles playing to a nearly half-empty stadium, a mule mascot treated better than players, and an explosion on a baseball field large enough to create a crater as part of a promotion that possibly heralded the death of disco music. Even wilder promotions are covered in impressive detail in this unique piece of major league history.
