Marriage proposals at baseball games are no strange occurrence, but rarely do fans see the hopeful groom-to-be get rejected in front of a ballpark audience.
Those in attendance at a New Britain Rock Cats game earlier this week witnessed just that, resulting in a video that went viral as soon as it hit the Internet.
Turns out, the whole thing was staged.
Speculation swirled on whether the act was real or not, as viewers noticed the couple and emcee fight off laughs and smirks during the performance. The Rock Cats — who are the Double-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins — came clean and admitted the proposal rejection was staged for publicity.
“After watching a public proposal, we talked about what would happen if the answer were ‘no,’ and how that might affect a crowd and those viewing it after on video,” vice president of marketing Mike Abramson said to the Star Tribune. “We worked with two of our staff on the skit and executed a digital strategy to set the video on a viral path; we could not be more pleased with the outcome.”
Abramson’s goal of publicity was accomplished, as the video has racked up over 600,000 views on YouTube and has been the subject of multiple news stories.
