Fans flocked to Petco Park on Wednesday evening for a Trevor Hoffman bobblehead giveaway.
Just like they did earlier this season for Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts and Mason Miller bobbleheads and everything from scarves and beanies to various vests, shirts and hats.
Boxes and boxes of bobbleheads were emptied as fans grabbed a giveaway honoring the Hall of Fame closer while making their way through the ballpark gates.
When they headed for the exits after the game, fans could anticipate bumping into budding entrepreneurs offering them $5 or $10 for the bobbleheads.
The giveaways have produced a robust secondary market, where in recent weeks the Hoffman bobbleheads were listed for “presale,” priced anywhere from $40 to $60 on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. Bobbleheads for Machado, Bogaerts and Miller were similarly priced for presale earlier this season.
Crazy? Here’s crazier.
The Padres’ July 31 game against the Giants includes a special “theme game” giveaway requiring a special ticket to get a bobblehead featuring broadcasters Don Orsillo and Mark Grant on Orsillo’s mini-yacht.
One “Don & Mud” bobblehead listed for presale sold Monday on eBay for $116. Four others sold in recent days for $90 or more.
“In my wildest dreams, I never thought that my huge head of plaster would be more popular than Manny Machado,” Grant said. “I’m flattered and humbled and honored. Who would have ever thought?”
Well, actually, there is some precedent here.
In 2023, a “Don & Mud” bobblehead giveaway featured them behind a desk broadcasting a game. More than a dozen have sold on eBay this year at an average of $140. Maybe it commands such a price because it’s a talking bobblehead, with signature phrases, like Orsillo on a home run: “Gone, into a sea of San Diegans.”
Or, as Grant says, “That’s some kind of nice.”
Drawing a crowd
Ballpark giveaways are virtually as old as the game itself, dating to the 1870s and 1880s with “Ladies Day.” Women “escorted and unescorted” were invited to a game for free.
In theory, this would boost attendance. Ownership also hoped that the presence of “the gentler sex” would add some decorum in an era when male fans were known for excessive drinking and vulgar language.
Several sources cite a 1952 St. Louis Browns game as the first promotional giveaway, when Browns owner Bill Veeck, regarded as the game’s foremost promoter, had “Bat Day” at Sportsman’s Park. Kids who attended the game with a paying adult received a free bat.
According to Peter Morris’ book “A Game of Inches: The Story Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball,” the idea was inspired after a bankrupt bat manufacturer approached Veeck to unload the company’s inventory. Veeck said they “worked out a deal in which we paid eleven cents for every finished bat and the guy threw in all the unfinished bats for free.”
That led to all kinds of promotional giveaways.
One popular promotion was “Ball Night,” where fans received free baseballs. It has since mostly been abandoned — or changed so that fans receive the giveaways as they’re exiting the ballpark.
There’s a reason for that, dating to a Cardinals-Dodgers game in 1995 that led to the last forfeit in baseball history. There were 15,000 foam baseballs given to fans 14 and under in the crowd of 51,000 as they entered Dodger Stadium.
According to news reports, one ball was tossed on the field in the sixth inning, a few more in the seventh and a bunch in the eighth, prompting a stoppage of the game to clean up the field and warn fans about throwing objects on the field.
Amazingly, balls that had been given to kids were being thrown on the field by adults.
L.A. was trailing 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth when Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda was ejected after arguing a controversial strike call against the Dodgers’ Raul Mondesi. More balls rained down on the field — along with a Southern Comfort whiskey bottle and a rum bottle that hit Cardinals right fielder John Mabry. The field was cleaned up again, and there was another warning from the PA announcer.
When the game resumed, an apple hit Dodgers on-deck hitter Chris Gwynn in the head and a ball — one of some 200 thrown on the field — nearly hit Cardinals center fielder Brian Jordan.
Umpires immediately declared a 9-0 forfeit win for St. Louis.
When the Dodgers held a ball night two years later, kids were given a voucher for the ball — that they could redeem later at the Los Angeles County Library.
The Padres’ promotional philosophy
The Padres unveiled their 2026 promotional giveaways in January, but the selection of the promotional items began months before the announcement.
Padres CEO Erik Greupner said fan surveys help determine the giveaways.
“That’s our first step,” Greupner said. “Year after year, our fans express a preference for bobbleheads and wearable items.”
There was a time when giveaways were essential to boosting Padres attendance.
The team didn’t draw 1 million fans (an average of 12,345 a game) until 1974. In fact, the Padres didn’t have their first sellout until 1975 — their seventh season of existence. A crowd of 49,618 witnessed a 6-3 loss to Cincinnati on “Central Federal Jacket Night,” when every kid in attendance received a yellow, vinyl Padres jacket.
The Padres have sold out 36 games this season. They’re averaging more than 41,000 fans per game, second only to the Dodgers, and are on pace to draw more than 3 million fans for the fourth straight year.
The team’s promotional philosophy has changed from getting fans for a game to getting them for a lifetime.
“We’ve increased the number of promotional items and increased the number we give out to 40,000 for each game because we think we’ve got a unique window of opportunity to really deepen our connection with our fanbase,” Greupner said. “One of the great ways to do that is to make sure nobody goes away disappointed.”
That philosophy is not universal. The Yankees, for instance, are limiting bobblehead giveaways this year to the first 18,000 fans in attendance.
Whether a fan arrives at Petco Park two hours before the game, right at first pitch or not until the second inning, the Padres want them to get a promotional item for that game.
“That’s a guest experience philosophy that we have that’s different than other teams,” Greupner said. “To deepen fan connection, we want a 10-year-old to take home the Fernando Tatis bobblehead and place it on their bedside stand in their room and then when they go off to college and come back, it’s there for them, and 30 years later when they’re a 40-year-old and he or she is making the buying decisions for where they’re family’s going to go to spend time together on the weekend.
“We’re playing the long game that they’re going to come to a Padres game in part because they felt connected to our team and our players at a young age. One of the key ways we can do that is through something like a bobblehead or a wearable, something that is part of their life for potentially decades to come.”
Puffer vest chaos
Despite efforts to make every fan go home happy, the Padres have had some issues.
Chaos broke out at Petco Park before the April 15 game against Seattle for “Puffer Vest Night.” Lines backed up at entrance gates, causing hour-long delays and, in at least one case, a fistfight.
Distribution was delayed as fans attempted to determine what size to choose, creating a bottleneck and backup at the entrances.
The Padres issued an apology that night.
“We could have and should have done a better job of the distribution,” Greupner said. “That was our fault, and we completely owned it. We immediately met and figured out how we could improve our process so something like that doesn’t happen again. …
“We went out immediately with an offer to any fan that had a poor experience where they didn’t receive an item or they turned around and left because the lines were too long or things were too chaotic at the gates and we offered a make-good of a puffer vest in their preferred size.”
Greupner said 11,000 fans took them up on the offer. The vests are going to be distributed in August to the fans who claimed them.
Bobblehead fever
Bobbleheads have become the centerpiece of the Padres’ giveaway promotions, with 13 bobblehead games — six all-fan giveaways and seven limited theme-game giveaways — scheduled for this season.
That wasn’t the case a decade ago, when bobbles weren’t an annual promotion. In fact, there weren’t any as recently as the 2014 and 2015 seasons.
“Not to take anything away from the rosters and the players we had in the 2014-15 era, but we have significantly more star power,” Greupner said. “We’ve been more opportunistic with bobbleheads over the past six-plus years because of the star power we’ve had on the team.”
Since it can take the better part of a year for a bobblehead to be produced and delivered, one critical element is making sure it’s not of a player who could be subject to a midseason trade.
“We do tend to give preference to those players that are under long-term contracts that are highly unlikely to be traded from year to year,” Greupner said.
The Padres were bobblehead beneficiaries two years ago, when they acquired Luis Arraez in a trade with Miami.
The Marlins had scheduled an Arraez bobblehead night for August that year. The Padres acquired 10,000 of the unfinished bobbleheads at the time of the trade.
“We then were able to paint it and finish it, and we used it as a theme-game item,” Greupner said. “We were essentially able to take the blank or mold that had been produced and turn it into a Luis Arraez Padres bobblehead.”
Asked if the trade hinged on acquiring the bobbleheads, Greupner laughed.
“That was a throw-in at the end, but it benefited both teams,” he said. “We ended up acquiring bobbleheads for less than it would have otherwise cost, and the Marlins were able to recover some of the costs they had put into it.”
Here’s the rub
Padres promotions have come a long way through the years.
A 2020 mlb.com story offers the best example, the article detailing the worst promotion by each major league team.
For the Padres, it picked a 1974 promotion involving the team’s light-hitting, much-beloved shortstop.
The promotion: “Win a Foot Rub from Enzo Hernandez Night.”
Whether the winner ever came to claim the prize is lost to history.
It would make one heck of a bobblehead, though.