As unfunny and unconvincing as advertising almost always is, I have to tip my cap to the only campaign I’ve known to so quickly part me with 4 dollars and 29 cents.
“Bigelow Tea! Grab a mug and tea proudly!” So says Howie Rose, master of the radio play-by-play, during every Mets broadcast over WCBS 880 AM. From the Bigelow Broadcast Booth, no less. “It’s the green tea that keeps my voice in peak condition . . .”
Getting to know this guy has been one of the great pleasures of cutting the cable cord, the only downside of which, conversely, was losing the SNY Mets TV broadcasts. But, ah, the intimacy of radio, the lozenge-smooth voice in your ear enticing rapt attention. F.D.R. was on to something, wasn’t he, with his Fireside Chats.
About Bigelow, made with Connecticut Yankee pride just yonder across the Sound in Fairfield, listen, I’m a coffee drinker, “big time,” as Dick Cheney used to say over weightier matters, but this English black tea blend tastes stone good, feels somehow healthier, and packs a fraction of the caffeine punch, for those evenings when you need a warm mug like a smoker needs a cig, but maybe not a cup of joe’s hundred-milligram goose that has you staring at the ceiling two hours hence.
Or is it in fact the case that my irrational fondness for the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club has swayed me in that direction? The effectiveness of Bigelow’s marketing and its oddly charming repetition during broadcasts is such that I frankly don’t know the answer.
But I do know an old-home week when I see one, or rather hear one over the AM airwaves, like this recent San Francisco stopover, when the Giants fielded Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis, Wilmer Flores, and Darin Ruf, former Mets all. Then the killer blow Sunday night, an r.b.i. double by a right fielder named Mike Yastrzemski, grandson of you know who. (As the “knock” of bat on ball could be made out just above the background crowd noise.)
Still, it was a 7-3 West Coast swing for the boys in royal and orange. I’ll drink to that.