Stuart Elliott: IFC and Boston Beer Deal for "Brockmire" Covers All Bases

There's a long, colorful tradition of beer brands sponsoring baseball teams, among them Ballantine and the New York Yankees, who back in the day celebrated home runs as "Ballantine blasts"; Rheingold and the New York Mets; Narragansett and the Boston Red Sox; Heileman's Old Style and the Chicago Cubs; and National Bohemian and the Baltimore Orioles. For decades, a brewer, Anheuser-Busch, owned a team, the St. Louis Cardinals. As the marketing strategy for the new IFC series Brockmire illustrates, so close are the ties between beer and baseball that even a make-believe team can have a beer sponsor.