The Twins are now on the clock following Tuesday's MLB All-Star Game, and the first event to "kick off All-Star ’14 comes later this month, when the Twins and MLB unveil the event’s official logo," according to Phil Miller of the Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE. The logo "will be plastered everywhere, including on the center field wall and, next year, on the shoulders of Twins uniforms." Twins President Dave St. Peter said, "In New York, I don’t care what you do, it has a tendency to get lost. We clearly intend to paint the town.” Miller reports the Twins are "organizing a parade of all-stars to the stadium, coordinating an enormous security effort between a half-dozen different agencies, and discussing traffic issues, given that it will be a normal work week at most downtown businesses." The club also must "develop a transportation plan ... to deliver thousands of visitors to the various events, and to hotels." The City Council must "approve a 'clean zone' to prohibit ambush marketing by non-sponsors, and extra enforcement of counterfeit merchandise laws." Miller notes one "great benefit to Target Field’s location is that the perimeter of All-Star events and hotels might be contained within a 10-block radius, meaning a sizable number of people can just walk the skyways to get where they need to go." St. Peter: “Indianapolis got rave reviews when it hosted the Super Bowl, and the biggest reason was that everything was downtown. We’re going to try to replicate that model.” However, Miller writes finding room is going to be an "issue everywhere." All-Star Games now "make 'sponsor zones' part of the experience, a state-fair-like area for Major League Baseball’s partners to reach customers and display their wares." Twins Senior VP/Operations Matt Hoy: "It's a great attraction, but we just don't have that kind of space" (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 7/18).
FANFEST A HIT IN N.Y.: MLB said it drew an attendance of 129,849 for the five-day All-Star Game FanFest at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in N.Y., the event's second-best total ever. The figure trails only the 150,804 for the '09 FanFest in St. Louis, and is 9% higher than last year's FanFest at Kauffman Stadium in K.C. (Eric Fisher, Staff Writer).
