The MLB's silks at Tony Clark's suggestion: the league should do more to market the Mookie Betts

Remember last year, during the all-star break, when Commissioner Rob Manfred answered questions about MLB's difficulties in promoting the very big Mike Trout by blaming Trout himself. Remember how Manfred said that Trout would have a "very big" brand if he worked more with MLB, which has not managed to propel a single star into a big cultural celebrity since Derek Jeter ? Do you remember how did you make fun of the absurdity of Manfred's case?

The MLB is back, a year later, in response to similar questions about the popularity of the MVP title Mookie Betts of the Boston Red Sox. Betts's case breaks the theory that much of Trout's cultural superiority is the Angels' lack of success in the playoffs – Betts has played four full seasons in Boston and has played three times in the playoffs. According to Tony Clark, Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, this team success and his many individual achievements should have propelled Betts into the high stratosphere of sports celebrity. By the Boston Globe:

"Mookie should be a household name," Clark said. "Mookie should be a guy with a name. You say [Cristiano] Ronaldo. You say [Lionel] Messi. You say Mookie. You should know who Mookie is. And outside the world of baseball, I do not know how many people know.

[…]

"He should be in conversation with non-baseball fans." Mookie [should] to be one of them. No doubt about it. "

It depends largely on the operation of baseball and there is no need to change it except to say that a given player's path to major tournaments is really opaque compared to basketball and football, and that says Clark believes the "unique name" status stems from MVPs and championships when it was awarded to LeBron James prior to his high school graduation. But the most interesting part of Clark's comments is the way they were received by Major League Baseball. Clark wants MLB to intensify its efforts to market its best players to non-baseball fans. MLB's answer, once again, is to blame the victim:

A league office source heard what Clark had to offer about Betts' lack of promotion and told the Globe that the MLB had tried to push Betts, but that the majority of the time, it had declined.

The source alluded to his advertisement "Let The Kids Play," one of the promotions that the MLB had been trying to involve in Betts. Yet the player to avoid would not participate.

For what it's worth, I'm a baseball fan and by surprise I could not tell you a single player who participated in the 'Let The Kids Play' campaign, and I seriously doubt that any of my non-baseball – fans' family members have even heard about it. It remains adorable and wonderful that the MLB's response to the many challenges to propel a baseball player into the 21st century is "do more of our advertising."

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