Can David Ortiz save Boston 2024?
With the Boston skyline sparkling in the background, a skinny teenager picks up a stick, taps a rubber baseball plate, tightens his grip, and digs in.
Without the Boston cameo, it could easily be a scene out of The Sandlot, or any other romantic baseball movie in which the purity of the game is expressed through the way the kids are playing it. Except in this case, in a video produced by the group promoting Boston’s bid for the 2024 Olympic games, the camera cuts to a close-up of a smiling David Ortiz.
“Playing with a stick back home, it was fun,’’ says the Red Sox star. “I remember I was 7, 8 years old, playing in the street. Me and my homies, we used to make baseball out of everything.’’
Boston 2024 is betting that if anyone can save Boston’s bid for the 2024 Olympic games, it’s one the city’s most prominent athletes. The Ortiz spot was posted on Boston 2024 Twitter account last week.
[fragment number=0]
Ezra Englebardt, strategic planning director at Boston-based Mullen Lowe advertising, believes Boston 2024 is cutting to the city’s core with this video.
“Bostonians have sports so tightly woven into the DNA of our culture, it’s such a huge part of living in the city,’’ Englebardt said in an email. “Sports are a great equalizer. We’re all fans, and that cuts across socioeconomic levels, neighborhoods, nationalities, religion, education – when it comes to rooting for our teams, we’re all fans.’’
Ortiz echoes those sentiments later in the video, bringing youthful exuberance full circle by describing his experience on the city’s greatest athletic stage.
“When I’m playing at Fenway Park, it feels like I have the fans going through my veins,’’ Ortiz said. “Boston fans are sports fans — and when it comes to sport, we’re the best. The fans here are going to support the Olympics better than anyone else. Bringing the Olympics to Boston is something that’s going to make this place even more special.’’
Ortiz, a board of directors member for the organization, will likely never be an Olympian, but he’s got incredible influence in Boston. The Dominican slugger has long been useful to marketers — his smile captivates fans to buy both Sox tickets and coffee. To this point, several prominent athletes, none as big as Ortiz, have starred in this video series, including figure skater Michelle Kwan, 2014 Boston Marathon winner Meb Keflezighi, and captain of the 1976 U.S. rowing team Anita DeFrantz.
Michael Eruzione, captain of the gold-medal winning 1980 US hockey team, was featured in a video with a similar pace to Ortiz’s, in which children acted out Eruzione’s anecdotal narration of when he played street hockey as a kid.
A Boston 2024 spokesperson would not comment on whether additional board of director members and athletes — particularly Larry Bird and JoJo White — will take part in the video series, or whether these athlete-driven ads will appear on Boston radio or television.
In a news cycle driven by the politics of the bid and wealthy men in suits, Ortiz’s promotional video is another effort by Boston 2024 to make sports the most important element of a Boston-based Olympics. This transition started when Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca replaced CEO of Suffolk construction company John Fish as chairman of the organization. And on a grass-roots level of social media, the video is Boston 2024’s effort to gain support from Boston sports fans. Few can motivate Boston sports fans better than Ortiz.
“People here love him,’’ said Englebardt. “He’s so much more than just an athlete who plays for a Boston team. He’s literally and figuratively a huge figure in the city and our shared culture — and has been for over a decade.’’
In this case, a huge figure distilled into a social-media based video lasting 1 minute and 26 seconds.
“It taps into nostalgia of youth, but also hometown pride,’’ Englebardt said. “At a deeper level than that, I think they want to focus the discussion about the Olympics that’s happening around the athletes, around sports, around the role that sports play in our lives and culture.’’
Whether that focus on youth and sports translates to actual support for the Olympic bid remains to be seen.
Major players in Boston’s olympic bid
[bdc-gallery id=”107972″]
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com