Tuesday, March 16, 2004
ERRATIC
You know, every time I see that Jumpman23 commercial with Jason Kidd in it, I always have one thing to ask afterward -- Does greatness make you beat your wife?
We've done our share here at Sports and B's when it comes to bashing the new Mariner ads. Derek has some thoughts on the ads himself. Both the P-I and the Times have their own articles on the Mariner ads, but Kay McFadden of the Times has some nice words...
The culturally inept and impossible-to-chant "Sodo Mojo" finally is fading along with the last trace particles of dust from the Kingdome implosion.
That's the good news. The bad news is its replacement: "Mariners baseball. Get all of it."
According to [Mariners VP of marketing Kevin] Martinez, the phrase is rooted in common baseball players' parlance — getting all of a ball with your bat, for instance.
But (A), it serves the advertiser's point of view rather than that of the fan. (B), it feeds a lurking suspicion that "all of it" refers to our wallets rather than to the national pastime. And (C), I defy anyone to shout it out loud at a game.
"Where did they get this McFadden?" I wondered to myself last night as I read this. Needless to say, she's a TV critic at the Times rather than a sports columnist, but hey, I got some unexpected nuggets out of that article.
I was sitting here after the Orioles/Marlins spring game (it rained like hell at the end), and was about to do something else when I saw that something called "The Teammates" was going to be on, and that it was one of those ESPN Original Entertainment deals. Not knowing what it was (and feeling stupid for it afterward), I thought it was going to be crap, but I left the television on. This was the 30-minute TV version of the Halberstam book of the same name. The Red Sox teammates involved were Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams. The program used a car trip taken by Dom and Pesky (Doerr was caring for his wife in Oregon, who had survived two strokes) to Florida to see a dying Ted Williams as a sort of canvas for past recollection. Something that definitely wasn't included in the book were the video clips during a fishing trip where Williams is in a hitting-related argument with Bobby Doerr. I don't have to tell you who won that argument. I could try to say more about what I saw in that 30-minute span, but I just wouldn't be doing it justice. To those who saw it, you saw a real treat, and for those who have read the book, then I'm sure it was an enlightening read.
We've done our share here at Sports and B's when it comes to bashing the new Mariner ads. Derek has some thoughts on the ads himself. Both the P-I and the Times have their own articles on the Mariner ads, but Kay McFadden of the Times has some nice words...
The culturally inept and impossible-to-chant "Sodo Mojo" finally is fading along with the last trace particles of dust from the Kingdome implosion.
That's the good news. The bad news is its replacement: "Mariners baseball. Get all of it."
According to [Mariners VP of marketing Kevin] Martinez, the phrase is rooted in common baseball players' parlance — getting all of a ball with your bat, for instance.
But (A), it serves the advertiser's point of view rather than that of the fan. (B), it feeds a lurking suspicion that "all of it" refers to our wallets rather than to the national pastime. And (C), I defy anyone to shout it out loud at a game.
"Where did they get this McFadden?" I wondered to myself last night as I read this. Needless to say, she's a TV critic at the Times rather than a sports columnist, but hey, I got some unexpected nuggets out of that article.
I was sitting here after the Orioles/Marlins spring game (it rained like hell at the end), and was about to do something else when I saw that something called "The Teammates" was going to be on, and that it was one of those ESPN Original Entertainment deals. Not knowing what it was (and feeling stupid for it afterward), I thought it was going to be crap, but I left the television on. This was the 30-minute TV version of the Halberstam book of the same name. The Red Sox teammates involved were Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams. The program used a car trip taken by Dom and Pesky (Doerr was caring for his wife in Oregon, who had survived two strokes) to Florida to see a dying Ted Williams as a sort of canvas for past recollection. Something that definitely wasn't included in the book were the video clips during a fishing trip where Williams is in a hitting-related argument with Bobby Doerr. I don't have to tell you who won that argument. I could try to say more about what I saw in that 30-minute span, but I just wouldn't be doing it justice. To those who saw it, you saw a real treat, and for those who have read the book, then I'm sure it was an enlightening read.
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