Anheuser-Busch has teamed up with Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith in an attempt to make Opening Day a national holiday/generate buzz with their name attached to it as a spring training publicity stunt. You would think they would put a little more effort into the whole thing, though, since they’re using a White House petition to get their message out there. You’d be wrong, though, says this map they tweeted out on the @Budweiser Twitter account on Tuesday:
Budweiser has no concept of baseball, geography, possibly reality
We have no idea what timeline or alternate dimension Budweiser thinks MLB exists in.
Let's make @MLB #OpeningDay a national holiday. Join us & sign the @WhiteHouse petition now: http://t.co/6ELFL6yxEr pic.twitter.com/uUGpCEFiyK
— Budweiser (@Budweiser) February 25, 2014 (Budweiser deleted the original tweet, but you can still find the map itself thanks to the screenshot-loving internet.)
(via Dan Lewis)
There are so many things wrong with this, and not all of them because of the design of the map. The geography is wonky, for one. We can maybe forgive them for Toronto being an American city, for the same reason those maps in your middle school textbook had Alaska as a floating island and Hawaii as just off the coast of California. Some of the other mistakes are far more egregious, though.
- The Yankees look like they are located in Buffalo, which is unarguably upstate New York, instead of “north of New York City” upstate New York.
- Kansas City is located in Kansas instead of Missouri, which is the kind of thing I thought was true when I was five years old and the idea of a city located in a place besides the state with the same name would have blown my mind.
- The Angels don’t actually play in Los Angeles, but I’m also pretty positive they’re not located in the Nevada desert.
- The Nationals might be straddling the Virginias and North Carolina, while the Orioles are all alone, regionally speaking. Just like Peter Angelos always wanted!
Granted, this is because of the design of the map more than anything: these little circle logos are too big for such a teeny map, and it leads to geography gone askew. You could forgive that and chalk it up to poor design, but don’t worry, there’s more to point out!
- The Astros have their old, pre-American League logo with the open star, rather than the giant “H” enclosed in a circle.
- Taking that same kind of mistake to the next level, the Marlins are the Florida Marlins here, not the Miami ones.
- Seriously, was this image given the go-ahead in 2012 and still came out this wrong after two years of work?
I guess we should just be happy Budweiser remembered what states those two play in.
