Millions of baseball fans were recently watching televised games when they were unexpectedly hit by a pitch!  An errant slider didn’t fly through their screens; rather, they were beaned by a very unconventional advertising curve.  The promotional pitch for Smile didn’t leave any bruises; in fact, many even liked it, but is this kind of guerrilla marketing fair or foul?  A veteran marketer and a rising rookie argue the call.

“My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys’.”– Harmon Killebrew

Ever since the first pitch was thrown, pitchers have been accused of “doctoring the baseball,” which means applying foreign substances to the ball that alters its path, making it more difficult for the batter to hit the pitch.