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Times-Republican · Marshalltown, Iowa · 1906

Base Ball at Finkle's Park: Waterloo vs. Brownies

Tall column advertisement headed Base Ball in a double-ruled box, for games at Finkle's Park Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, May 27, 28, 29, Waterloo vs Brownies, games called at 3:30, Sunday games at 3:00, admission 25 and 35 cents, ladies' days Tuesdays and Fridays.
Source
Times-Republican, 1906. View the original

Three days of base ball at Finkle's Park in May 1906: Waterloo against the Brownies, games called at 3:30, admission 25 and 35 cents, and ladies' days on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The Marshalltown Times-Republican ran this column ad in late May 1906, and it is a complete education in how a ball club sold three home dates at once. “BASE BALL. Finkle’s Park, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, May 27, 28, 29. Waterloo vs Brownies.”

The Brownies were Marshalltown’s own entry in the Iowa League, and everything a fan needed sat stacked in one skinny column: “Games Called at 3:30. Sunday Games at 3:00,” an hour earlier on Sunday so everybody could still make supper. “Admission 25 and 35c.” And then the line the whole ad was building toward: “Ladies’ Days: Tuesdays and Fridays.”

Two ladies’ days a week is a club that has done the arithmetic on its grandstand. A park full of women on Tuesday buys a park full of families on Sunday, and the Brownies clearly knew it. Fifty years before anybody said the word marketing out loud in a front office, Finkle’s Park had a loyalty program running on the school-week calendar.

PlaceMarshalltown, Iowa
Year1906
NewspaperTimes-Republican
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