Lasorda Knows How to Deliver This Pitch

Well, at least one Dodger is still going in the postseason.

The ever-willing, always able Tom Lasorda, the Cy Young of pitchmen and 79-year-old prince of propaganda, has lots of innings left in him before the last out of the 2006 World Series.

You’ve seen the ads. Brilliant. All over TV, on several networks, whenever baseball is played and even during telecasts of other sports. If you know Lasorda, you laugh and buy it. If you don’t know Lasorda, you do the same.

The concept, inspired by Major League Baseball’s marketing people, led by top executives Tim Brosnan and Jacqueline Parkes in MLB’s business and marketing operations and based on years of research, was to make sure baseball fans didn’t bail on the playoffs when their teams bailed on them.

“It was meant to be a campaign that gives people a reason to still watch,” says Brosnan. “Our message is, it is October. This is the good stuff now, no matter what teams are delivering it.”

Parkes says baseball’s research showed that once a team has been eliminated, as many as 50% to 60% of its fans stop watching the rest of the postseason, many in full sulk.

“We wanted, needed, to get those fans back,” she says.

How to do that had its birth in one of those ad-people-present-to-filthy-rich-client meetings in New York in May. McCann-Erickson Worldwide, the biggest ad agency of its kind in the world, had struck out badly in its first trip to the plate in front of Brosnan and Parkes. The second time up, they had an idea and a leading character in mind. Fifteen minutes into the presentation, they presented their proposed presenter.

Home run. It was Lasorda. A star was born.

Brosnan and Parkes loved it. They called Commissioner Bud Selig to see how he felt. He loved it. He called Lasorda, who said he would do anything to help Selig and the sport of baseball.

“The whole thing took about 15 minutes to get done, to get everybody on board,” Parkes says.

It didn’t take a whole lot longer to produce, a week or so in August on location in Long Beach and on campus at USC.

There are three commercials.

One has Lasorda talking to a woman in her kitchen, where he cajoles her husband and father, both Cleveland Indians fans, out of hiding in the cabinets with some tough love -- “Don’t be babies,” he says -- by telling them there is a lot more baseball left, and true baseball fans should understand that.

A second has Lasorda in the hall of a sorority house, coaxing a Boston Red Sox fan out of the bathroom. “Tell her not to feel bad that the Red Sox are out of the postseason,” he says to another coed, who replies, icily, “I’m from New York.” Lasorda gives her a look like she has just asked him what he thought of Dave Kingman’s performance.

The third, a personal favorite, has Lasorda trying to coax a Chicago Cubs fan out of a tree. The man’s face seems to reflect inordinate pain and frustration, almost as if he wants the owners to sell and set him free. (Maybe we are internalizing too much here.)

In each case, Lasorda is wearing a tuxedo and being part wise grandpa, part annoyed-at-these-wimps older brother and part Henry Kissinger. Brosnan says that part of the tuxedo-wearing concept was inspired by the Harvey Keitel role in the movie “Pulp Fiction.”

“Tommy is perfect,” Selig says. “He is the absolute best ambassador for our game we have.”

Parkes says that the actual production of the ads, frequently a long and tortuous road, was a joy.

“It’s the first time I ever saw people, when they heard what was going on, go get their lawn chairs and pull them up to stay and watch,” she says.

She says that Lasorda took care of everybody, from the hair stylists to the mother of the little girl who played the organ in the commercials. Colin Gunderson, Lasorda’s assistant, who has seen it all and heard the stories 500 times -- even the dozen or so that are true -- says that Lasorda heard one of the neighbors near their location in Long Beach talking about a youngster, about 10, who had just lost his father.

“He found the kid, made sure he was on the set all day, ate lunch with him and even got him to sit with the producers,” Gunderson says.

When they filmed at the USC sorority house, the house mother was so taken by Lasorda that she went out to a restaurant and brought him special rigatoni for lunch. Reports are that it measured up perfectly to his two required specifications. It was hot and free.

Lasorda has been an ambassador for baseball in many ways before. He did the unthinkable by managing a United States team of mostly minor leaguers to an Olympic gold medal in 2000. And he went on a special tour this spring at the request of Selig before the World Baseball Classic. One day after his appearance in San Diego, they sold 26,000 tickets.

But seldom, even in his days of Slim Fast commercials and National League pennants, has the former Dodgers manager and current special advisor to club Chairman Frank McCourt reached this level of public acclaim.

“People are calling me from all over the country,” he says. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m overwhelmed.”

Parkes says it differently.

“We expected a lot,” she says. “But Tommy went above and beyond. He over-delivered.”

She is too young to know this is not a first, too young for memories of his days on the mound, when fastballs soared high and away. And away. And away.