Larry Bernandez

Like many baseball fans living in the Midwest, I start getting excited for the upcoming season when the snow starts to melt.  Baseball is a sign that spring is near and that it is safe to get off the couch to go outside to enjoy a game.  Unlike nearly all of my fellow hibernating Midwestern baseball fans, I follow the Seattle Mariners.  I grew up going to games in the Kingdome and cheering for Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Jay Buhner, Randy Johnson, and Edgar/Tino Martinez.  I moved to Iowa when I was in 5th grade, but have remained a huge Mariners fan ever since. 

My wife, Hailey, will disagree that the nice weather actually does get me off my couch, so the real sign for me that the baseball season is finally almost here is when the Mariners release their commercials. My favorite 2011 Mariners commercial is titled "Encore, Encore" and stars 2010 Cy Young winner Felix Hernandez.  While I am certainly biased in many ways (huge Ms fan & Felix is the only jersey I own after the Cutler debacle...) I absolutely LOVED this commercial.  Here it is:

The Mariners marketing department must have received an amazing amount of positive feedback from this commercial.  Within a few days after the commercial was first released online there was a team controlled twitter feed (@Larry_Bernandez) and they recently announced that they will be having a Larry Bernandez Bobblehead night on Saturday, August 27th against the White Sox (2011 Mariners Promotional Schedule).  

Typically I am not motivated to go to any sporting even based on promotional giveaways - at least I like to think that I'm not.  But when I found out that the Mariners were doing this and that it magically fell on a Saturday that I have absolutely nothing on my calendar, I convinced Hailey to let me look into tickets.  Unfortunately the combined cost of airlines, hotels, and tickets to the game will have to postpone my first trip to Safeco Field, but you can bet that I'll be intently searching eBay for Larry Bernandez bobbleheads on August 28th.


You can see all of the 2011 Mariners commercials here: 2011 Mariners Commercials, and get a great review of all of them from one of my favorite Mariners' blogs here: Lookout Landing.

Have you ever been coerced into buying tickets to anything due to a giveaway or a promotional handout? Comment below!

EDIT: This story was on the espn.com front page the afternoon after I wrote this post: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6583786