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Never underestimate the power of a great tie-in.
The baseball season may be just getting underway but the White Sox just clinched Best MLB Promotional Giveaway in the Entire History of Ever with their announcement that all those who attend their August 11 game will receive (wait for it) a pope-themed hat.
The hats are shaped like the Pope’s miter, with the team’s sock logo in the middle.
Let’s not forget, after all, that the pontiff (also known as The Priest Formerly Known As Robert Prevost) endeared himself to sports fans everywhere when it became known that he was a Sox (oh, and Villanova hoops) fan.
In fact, before reaching the Vatican, he could be seen rooting for his team during the 2005 World Series. (The pope-to-be appears around the seven-second mark in the video.)
And according to Yahoo! News, “Pope Leo hasn’t been shy about showing off his fandom since becoming the leader of the Catholic Church a year ago. He wore a White Sox hat for his weekly general audience at the Vatican and later trolled a Chicago Cubs fan (in both Spanish and English) following the team’s elimination in the 2025 NLDS.”
But wait! There’s more, according to CBS News:
“Leo … sent White Sox legend Paul Konerko an autographed No. 14 jersey and gave a thumbs up to a White Sox fan who yelled "God bless the White Sox!" to him last month in Rome.”
So perhaps it was only a matter of time until the supreme pontiff wound up in the eye of baseball’s promo storm.
The hat was originally meant to be limited to fans who had purchased specialty theme night tickets. They would be able to sit in a special “Pews at the Ballpark” section. Once the hat hit the news, though, it went wildly viral, leading the team to (ahem) grant its own version of a papal dispensation. The White Sox said fans who had already purchased the specialty tickets would receive the hat and an as-yet-unnamed additional item.
It’s going to be hard to top a pope’s miter. We’re just saying. But the Sox say that given the reception, everyone deserves a Pope hat.
"The fans have spoken, and unlike some of our more limited quantity promotions, the White Sox Pope Hat is one we believe all fans should have the opportunity to take home," Brooks Boyer, the chief revenue and marketing officer for the team, Yahoo! noted. "We viewed the promotion as a creative way to celebrate one of the franchise’s most popular fans, and by the overwhelming response we received, White Sox fans certainly agreed."
Outkick said it best: “They have, in a sense, gone full-Oprah: You get a Pope hat! And you get a Pope hat! And you get a Pope hat!”
Ticket sales for the game against the Reds have gone off the charts since the announcement.
According to GameTime, ticket demand for the Pope Hat Giveaway game surged nearly 40 times after the promotion was announced — already the largest single-week demand spike recorded for any White Sox home game this season.
And that’s for a Tuesday night game, late in the season when the standings have already been shrugged off and when interest can wane, particularly on a night that might be stiflingly hot.
As GameTime further notes, “This is a rebuilding White Sox team with one of the quieter home demand profiles in the AL. The surrounding games are selling at a fraction of this pace. The Ozzie Guillen jersey retirement game on August 8 — three days earlier, with its own promotional hook — is trending well below the pope hat game. Nothing else on the schedule is close.”
And, it is safe to say, nothing else in MLB this summer is close, although there have been exceptionally good efforts over the years. The Baltimore Orioles held their Buck Showalter garden gnome giveaway on Sunday, June 28, 2015, during a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians, resulting in huge ticket demand — much to Showalter’s disgust.
Of course, we’ll always have Disco Demolition Night, a 1979 promotion that ended in a riot. The event, held at Comiskey Park, took place during a doubleheader between the Sox and the Detroit Tigers and featured a crate filled with disco records being blown up on the field.
A crowd of spectators rushed onto the field during the explosion and had to be ejected by riot police. The damage to the field caused by the crowd and the explosion rendered the area unplayable and the White Sox were required to forfeit the second game to the Tigers.
Before that, though, you might have to go all the way back to 1919, when Yankees outfielder Ping Bodie competed against an ostrich named Percy in a spaghetti-eating contest in Jacksonville, Florida. Bodie won the competition when Percy passed out after his 11th plate of pasta.
We have so many questions about this.
But back to the pope. Yahoo adds, “In November, future White Sox owner Justin Ishbia met with Pope Leo and invited him to throw out the first pitch before a game. As now, there’s no word on whether His Holiness will make a surprise appearance on Pope hat night in August.”
Outkick had the best walkaway. “Rate Field is going to be quite the sight on August 11. There's just going to be a sea of Pope hats… assuming the game sells out, and it looks like it may.”
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