The Yankees Tried Serving Beer With Players’ Faces In Them, and the MLB Promptly Shut It Down

Lighten up, nerds.

The New York Yankees held a press event Monday to show off all the new stadium foods they’ll be selling for ungodly prices this season, but it’s a revolutionary take on beer foam art that’s getting the most attention.

Thanks to an innovative system from a company called Beer Ripples, images of the team’s logo and the faces of players such as Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton were printed on the beer foam with amalt extract.

But the MLB has a problem with that. Newsday says the league brought down the hammer on the Yankees telling the team that it cannot sell beer with player likenesses.

“We were unaware,’’ of the images, a league spokesman told Newsday. “We spoke to the club, the club wasn’t aware, either. To the best of our knowledge, they have told them it’s not authorized, to cease doing it.’’

The Yankees say they never planned to sell these beers anyway. “Our hospitality team took Monday’s event as an opportunity to test the image machine with various Yankees-related logos and photos,” a spokesperson said. “However, the Yankees have no current plans of incorporating this decorative element on concessions items this season.”

Blue Point Beer, the brewer that made the beer emblazoned with the offending images, suggests that the team isn’t being totally honest. 

“At certain stations at Yankee Stadium they have a machine that will allow you to put the Yankees players’ faces on the beer,” the brewery’s PR agency told Newsday. “If MLB and the Yankees have killed it, it’s done.’’

Don’t count on it being done forever though. If there’s one thing baseball teams are good at, it’s making money off of people for overpriced novelties. That means the beer printing machines will be up and running sooner than you can say $18 Bug Light.