The New York Yankees may need to look before they hop next time.
Yankee Stadium recently unveiled what appeared to be some cool new concession technology: A machine from the company Ripples, Inc., that can print images into a beer’s foam.
Yes, those “images” include players’ faces, as the stadium demonstrated Monday during a media event, where it served beers from Blue Point Brewery with the likes of Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez and others etched into the foam.
Pretty sweet, right? Well, there’s one problem. The beers violated Major League Baseball rules.
MLB doesn’t permit active players to be involved in the advertising or promotion of any type of beer or alcohol. So, when the league caught wind of the frothy faces after pictures of the suds circulated on the internet, it issued the Yankees “what amounted to a cease-and-desist-order,” Newsday’s Steven Marcus reported.
An MLB spokesman told Newsday the Yankees were unaware of the images before Monday, and that the league has told the team the images are “not authorized.”
A rep for the Yankees cleared the air on the mix-up Tuesday, insisting the stadium wasn’t planning on serving the unique beers during the regular season.
“Our hospitality team took Monday’s event as an opportunity to test the image machine with various Yankees-related logos and photos,” the spokesman told Newsday. “However, the Yankees have no current plans of incorporating this decorative element on concessions items this season.”
Pour one out for this creative idea.
