I’m a die-hard baseball fan and I realize that’s not true of all of you. Rest assured that you don’t need to know much, if anything, about the sport to appreciate today’s story — it’s only passingly about baseball, in fact! — Dan

Beer and baseball tend to go hand-in-hand — the drink is a popular one at Major League games, and local bars often show games on TV. You probably don’t need me to prove the point. And if you go to a Major League game or watch one on TV, you’ll almost certainly see ads for various beer brands. But until recently, there was one place you’d not see a beer ad — on the name of the baseball stadium itself.

With one exception — sort of.

Starting a few decades ago, sports teams began selling naming rights to their stadiums. Corporations fork over millions of dollars a year to get their business’s name on the venue, giving visibility to their brand whenever the stadium is mentioned. It took fans a while to warm up to the idea, but it’s so commonplace nowadays that few really think twice about it. Leagues and owners love the idea — it means more money for them.

But leagues are wary of brand affiliations that don’t match the values of the sport. And in 1953, that policy caused a problem in St. Louis.

The Cardinals, one of the two St. Louis teams at the time, had just been purchased by the Anheuser-Busch brewing company, makers of Budweiser beer. August Busch Jr., the head of the family-owned business, took an active role leading the baseball team as well. And he saw an opportunity to use the Cardinals to help him sell more beer. At the time, the Cardinals played their home games at Sportsman’s Park, and August Busch decided to change that: he proposed renaming the venue “Budweiser Stadium.” Major League Baseball (“MLB”), though, said no. As the Columbia Daily Tribune reported, “Major League Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick did not appreciate the concept of naming a ballpark after a beer, and the idea was quashed.”

August Busch wasn’t one to give up so easily, though. He decided to rename the stadium anyway — after himself. In 1953, Sportsman’s Park became “Busch Stadium.” MLB had no reason to object. But two years later, they did. In 1955, Anheuser-Busch — under August Busch’s instructions — introduced a new product called “Busch Bavarian Beer,” which has since been shortened to simply “Busch Beer.” The product was specifically created and named to take advantage of the stadium’s new name. As the Society for American Baseball Research noted, “Instead of naming the ballpark after a beer, they tried a different tack and named a beer after the ballpark.”

Major League Baseball couldn’t do much about it. The stadium was, formally, named for the team’s owner; the fact that his company also named a beer after him was just an unfortunate “coincidence.” The name was so permanent that it has outlasted two buildings — the Cardinals moved into a new stadium in 1967 and then an even newer one in 2006, and both have carried the “Busch Stadium” name.

The name of the 2006 stadium, though, wasn’t controversial. In the 1990s, MLB revoked the ban on beer-named stadiums. In 1993, MLB expanded, adding a team in Colorado (the Rockies). The Coors Brewing company made a $30 million investment in the team, and the league allowed the brewery to get naming rights in perpetuity over the Rockies stadium, now called “Coors Field.” And no loophole was needed to get that one done.

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Today’s Bonus fact: In the 1980s, a beer brand asked parodist and performer Weird Al Yankovic for an endorsement, offering him $5 million in exchange. He turned it down, as he explained to the Olympian:

Double bonus!: Many beer brands in Japan have a special feature on their cans — braille lettering. The reason? As VinePair explains, “the likelihood of picking up a six-pack of canned beer and accidentally mistaking it for soda, thereby becoming intoxicated without realizing it, isn’t a problem for those of us with healthy eyesight, but if you’re blind, the likelihood of this occurring is a real possibility, especially if you live in a place where soda and beer are sold very close together.” Braille on the can tops, as seen at that link, solves the issue.

From the Archives: Why Marylanders Pay More for a Little Less Beer: Smaller bottles, less money. But why?

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And thanks! — Dan