Major Leaguer Catches Drone Tossed Baseball
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Is there anything more American than drones and baseball? There might be one: drones and baseball, used in an advertising campaign. Even if the advertising campaign is for a Canadian company, and the player is Kevin Pillar of the Toronto Blue Jays. SportChek, a retailer no doubt delighted to be getting press from its gimmick drone, built a custom baseball dropper and GoPro camera holder for a DJI Phantom quadcopter, and then flew it over a field for Pillar to snag out of the sky.

From an altitude of several hundred feet, the drone releases the baseball.

And Pillar leaps into action, snagging it above the field.

This Pillar/Sport Chek combination is the latest in a long line of gimmick drones, a delightfully modern marketing approach where something unrelated to drones (like baseball and sports accessories) uses a drone in a novel way to showcase that product. Gimmick drones range from the amusing, like this hockey player shooting pucks at target-toting drones, to the distasteful, like this sunblock-ejaculating robot seagull.

Watch the baseball drone video below: