Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 2, 1995 TAG: 9509050025
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
So the closer he comes to breaking the major league baseball record for consecutive games played, the better he looks as a pitchman.
iO pken, the Baltimore Orioles shortstop, is scheduled to eclipse the record held by Lou Gehrig when he plays in his 2,131st consecutive game Wednesday.
After a decade of deals predominantly with companies in Baltimore or markets that root for the Orioles, the streak is generating demand for Ripken from national marketers like General Mills, to appear on Wheaties boxes, and General Motors Corp., to promote the durability of Chevrolet trucks.
The hoopla over the impending record - a rare bright spot for the beleaguered sport - is also renewing interest in Gehrig, the New York Yankees first baseman who died in 1941.
``It's a win-win situation for everyone,'' said Darci Ross, senior vice president in charge of the sports division of CMG Worldwide in Indianapolis, which licenses the rights to celebrities living and dead and works for the estate of Gehrig's wife, Eleanor.
CMG Worldwide is developing Ripken-Gehrig projects, Ross added, for marketers like Nike Inc., which plans to give away trading cards during the record-breaking game, against the California Angels in Baltimore.
CMG Worldwide is coordinating those efforts with the Tufton Group, a marketing company that represents Ripken and is screening dozens of endorsement requests.
The primary way Tufton filters offers, said Ira Rainess, Ripken's marketing agent in Lutherville, Md., is by determining if they complement the Gehrig-like persona of Ripken, known for his dedication and clean-cut sincerity.
Marketers of products deemed inappropriate had best look elsewhere. For instance, during the 1980s Ripken signed a contract with the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association, promoting milk in Maryland and other local markets, rather than endorsing Jockey underwear nationally.
Sports marketing experts call that a sound strategy.
It makes sense for Ripken to exploit ``his absolute good-citizen image,'' said Marty Blackman, president of Blackman & Raber, a sports and entertainment marketing consulting company in New York, because ``he can become a Nolan Ryan or a Joe DiMaggio,'' sought after for their dignified endurance on the diamond.
Annual gross royalties for licensing Gehrig's likeness, which ranged from $4,000 to $30,000 before Ripken closed in on the record, now exceed $100,000, said George Pollack, a lawyer in Atlantic Beach, N.Y., who is the executor of the Eleanor Gehrig estate.
, adding that an undisclosed portion is donated to the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Center at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan.
Pollack said he would attend the game at which Ripken is expected to surpass the Gehrig record, in part because the Orioles will donate the proceeds from selling 260 special field seats at $5,000 each to Johns Hopkins University.
Hopkins will form a foundation specializing in research on diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which became known as Lou Gehrig's disease after it killed him.
``It would be a thrill if some of the money raised led to a cure,'' Pollack said.
As for the record, ``it's a wonderful opportunity for Cal Ripken,'' he added. ``I remember Eleanor saying records are to be broken.''
``If an advertising agency wants Cal to do things that aren't Cal, no matter how much money is offered, we turn it down,'' Rainess said. ``We don't want to make Cal something he's not.''
``I chose the one that felt right to me,'' Ripken said Tuesday when he announced his Chevrolet truck endorsement, his first for a national nonsports marketer. ``I couldn't see myself modeling underwear.''
On the other hand, he added, he sees himself as ``big, cumbersome and maybe strong and reliable, which matches better with a truck.''
, even if many marketers clamor for athletes with the rebellious personalities popular with younger consumers.
Also benefiting Ripken is the streak's appeal in a bleak baseball landscape.
``It's really the only positive P.R. baseball has had this year,'' said Nova Lanktree, president of the Lanktree Sports Celebrity Network, a marketing company in Chicago. ``It puts him out there as one of the heroes.''
That is amplified, she added, by the similarities between the ``strong, silent'' Ripken and the ``warm and fuzzy'' memories of those traits in Gehrig, as kept fresh by the 1942 film ``The Pride of the Yankees,'' in which Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright portrayed the Gehrigs.
``You watch it 20 times,'' Ms. Lanktree said, ``and you still cry at the end.''
Those are welcome words to George Pollack, a lawyer in Atlantic Beach, N.Y., who is the executor of the Eleanor Gehrig estate.
by CNB