Today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch has our story on how big marketers, including Anheuser-Busch, are embracing philanthropy as the theme of next week’s All-Star Game marketing. Many baseball fans are struggling through an economic funk, so it’s an interesting and probably timely strategy.

Examples of the feel-good approach:

• The Anheuser-Busch Foundation is contributing more than $180,000 to help finish a baseball field at Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club in north St. Louis. The money will go toward a scoreboard, fencing, irrigation and grading.
• State Farm, the insurance company, anticipates donating between $500,000 and $1 million to the Boys & Girls Club of America. The figure will depend on the number of balls hit out of the park during the Home Run Derby.
• Bank of America is contributing $5,000 to local food banks for every hit notched during the All-Star Game, on top of matching fans’ contributions to FeedingAmerica.org on Tuesday. The bank expects to donate $100,000 to area food banks.
• Holiday Inn is chipping in $37,500 to kids’ charities.
• KPMG, MasterCard and Anheuser-Busch are sending hundreds of volunteers to help with recycling, greeting and escorting folks at the charity concert and other events.

From the story:

Tuesday’s All-Star game, to be held in St. Louis for the first time since 1966, promises to be baseball’s biggest event before the playoffs. National marketers are swooping into St. Louis, eager to wring value out of their sponsorships in a hotbed of avid baseball fans.

This year’s marketing efforts might surprise those expecting a nonstop barrage of garish commercialism. Instead, the theme seems to be grassroots community service, philanthropy and corporate responsibility.

Baseball is eager to stake its claim as an important social institution, not just a game. Sponsors have gotten the message. Signs of conspicuous consumption are out. Good deeds, apparently, are in.

Sponsors “are going to help us leave St. Louis in a better way than we found it,” said John Brody, senior vice president of corporate sales and marketing at Major League Baseball. “We don’t want people to feel like this is just a big corporate event. We believe in this time that we need to answer the call to service.”