I know I am being a little too Yankee-centric with this second post also being about the team, but I saw the first ad for the Ortiz call your shot promotion by State Farm and thought it was a brilliant idea for Ortiz.  At Yankee stadium, though… well… that’s another story.  Little did I know that the Yankees hadn’t approved such a measure.  The problem now is the advertisements are already rolling, no way MLB makes State Farm change who is involved at this point.  This Richard Sandomir article explains the situation, but it really is shocking to believe that the Yankees weren’t apprised of the situation.   MLB has a team that focuses on the any special event, such as the All-Star game.  That team is separate from all marketing arms, but, my understanding, was supposed to work with the host team to be as congruent as possible to add value for local sponsors as well as the individual event sponsors.  State-Farm, is who is the Official sponsor of the home-run derby should have had its activation of that sponsorship cleared months ago, and yet if the Yankees hierarchy just learned of this after the advertisements rolled out, then thats a big error on someone’s part.  The other issue within this article is the suggestion that the called shot never happened, which has never been proven one way or another, but still is such a significant part of baseball lore that imitating it should be sacrilege alone. The clause in the contract that allows the sponsor to change the athlete is interesting, but most likely there in case Oritz got caught with a mound of hookers or in case of injury between now and then.  The number of players who could participate in such a promotion are few, and those that would bring State Farm any added value are fewer.  The player, not to embarrass himself, would have to be someone who can nearly hit home-runs at will, and ARod, who would be the likely replacement now that Giambi is not hitting so well, is not likely to risk the embarrassment of not being able to hit the ball where the fan calls it.  I really can’t wait to see how this one plays out.