Commercial Integrity

Last Friday was the day Alyssa and I were supposed to go into NYC to film the Pepsi commercial. We didn't make it. Alyssa had been sick all week. She probably could have appeared on camera on Friday, but I woke up a little off kilter and went downhill from there, spending the whole weekend in bed. Apologies to Pepsi and their promotional agency for the last-minute change. We're now looking at the end of this week to film it. Pepsi has an ad-run date that they're up against. They've already bought the advertising time for this unproduced ad, so they don't have much time to wait on us. They don't want to run dead air.

Spring training is less than a month away. I report on February 15th. By February 16th, we'll be filming all sorts of things for the league, our regional sports network, the major networks, various charities... It's like we go down to spring training to be movie stars instead of baseball stars.

Some guys enjoy that part. I'm okay with it. I know how to read, so I can usually be done with whatever it is within an hour or so. But some guys hate it. They freeze up. They read their lines like first graders. They move like robots. And some of these guys are big stars. For them, it's easy to stand in the batters box in front of a live audience of 55,000 and a TV audience of millions and stare down a 6 foot 10 lefty throwing fastballs 100 mph at their heads. They were born to do that, and that's why they're so good at it. They were not born to speak in front of a camera and promote Kahn's hot dogs.

There are always those guys who feel left out, too. A few seasons ago, Steve Emory, who bounced around pretty much every year with a new team, insisted he appear in a spot. He went to our then PR guy, Doc Castro, and made a major stink. "I've been playing this game for ten years. I've played for eight teams. People follow me around. They know me. I'm perfect for this." Part of his statement was true. "The Emory Board," a legion of four or five fans, did follow him around each year in the summertime for a couple of weeks. Steve was one of the more wacky guys and "The Emory Board" wanted to be associated with a wacky guy. I guess because they were wacky too.

So Doc relents and lets Steve appear in a radio spot they would air during the pre-game show. Steve wouldn't read the script. He kept ad-libbing, saying his material was better than Doc's. Doc, of course, didn't write the scripted material, which was: "This is Steve Emory and you're listening to Tom Myers on The Team, sports radio 820, WTEM New York." Steve didn't like this. He wanted to say: "Steve Emory here. Did you know you were listening to The Team? And did you know it was pre-game time? And did you know Tom Myers is The Man, telling it like it is? If you didn't, you do now."

"Too long," Doc said. The radio spot was supposed to be 5 seconds. Steve's version clocked in around 11 or 12, depending upon his usage of commas. Neither man would budge; Steve screaming about integrity and Doc just wanting to finish up so he could take care of some other tasks on his endless daily To Do list. Doc gave him an ultimatum of doing the spot as written or not doing it at all. To be fair, he was giving 11 seconds to decide.

From what I heard, they refrained from airing Steve's spot in spring training games just in case something happened. And it did. Steve was cut the last day of camp. When he cleaned out his locker, there was a cassette tape of his version of the spot resting neatly inside one of his dress shoes. Apparently, Doc, always the softy, had recorded both versions. That's how Steve got his pre-game gig on FOX later that year. From an audiocassette rehearsal tape. I guess it helps to have a little artistic integrity.