Ballantine Brewery - Ballantine As Sponsor and In Popular Culture

Ballantine As Sponsor and In Popular Culture

• The brewery had a long sponsorship arrangement with the New York Yankees on television and radio, spanning the 1940s to the 1960s. Team announcers, most notably the legendary Mel Allen, labeled Yankee home runs, "Ballantine Blasts." The advertising jingle went "Hey, get your cold beer! Hey, get your Ballantine!...Just look for the three-ring sign/And ask the man for Ballantine." After which Allen would advise, "You'll be so glad you did." Ballantine was responsible for making Phil Rizzuto a Yankee broadcaster after his release. Years after he was famously let go by the Yankees, Allen told author Curt Smith that Ballantine had ordered his firing as a cost-cutting move.
• New York Yankees broadcasts featured commercials with the jingle, "Baseball and Ballantine/ Baseball and Ballantine/ What a combination/ All across the nation/ Ballantine, Ballantine beer."
• Ballantine also sponsored the Philadelphia Phillies on radio and TV for many years in the 1950s and 1960s. The scoreboard in right center field at Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium (previously known as Shibe Park) sported a 60-foot-long (18 m) Ballantine Ale sign.
• Mel Brooks adapted the 2000 Year Old Man character to create the 2500 Year Old Brewmaster for Ballantine Beer in the 1960s. Interviewed by Dick Cavett in a series of ads, the Brewmaster (in a German accent, as opposed to the 2000 Year Old Man's Jewish voice) said he was inside the original Trojan horse and "could've used a six-pack of fresh air."
• Ballantine was the preferred beer of Martin Crane on the television show Frasier. He drinks the pale ale in almost every episode, usually from the can.
• Writer/journalist Hunter S. Thompson mentions drinking Ballantine Ale in his novel Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
• In 1963 & 1964 Ballantine sponsored a drum and bugle corps based in Newark New Jersey named the "Ballantine Brewers".
• Ballantine Ale is mentioned in the song High Plains Drifter by the Beastie Boys. In particular, they refer to the rebus puzzles that were printed on the underside of the cap during the Falstaff era.
• Rapper GZA/The Genius of Hip Hop supergroup Wu-Tang Clan mentions Ballantine Ale numerous times on many different group and solo albums, as have other clan members, GZA/The Genius most notably mentions the classic ale on the Enter the Wu-Tang albums track "7th Chamber"