If you’ve watched the playoffs you’ve probably seen the State Farm insurance commercial featuring Kerry Wood pulling Andre Dawson out of the ivy at Wrigley Field.
It’s been playing on a non-stop loop all month, although it’s amusing enough that the baseball-watching world hasn’t completely turned against it and Dawson is loving the reaction.
“It’s been off the charts,” Dawson told Mike Bernardino of the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “Everywhere I go, people are saying, ‘Hey, I saw the commercial. Good job.’ Now I’ve got more friends than I can imagine.”
Bernardino has the details on how the commercial was shot:
Turns out there was no green-screen technology required to make the “Hawk” look like he’d been stuck in the famed ivy all these years. All it took was a rectangular table, some makeup-room magic and a little extra ivy to cover up a door in the right-field wall. The production crew opened the now-hidden door and had Dawson, 58, lie Superman-style on the sheet-covered table. Each time Wood reached in, Dawson would hand him a different item.
It’s nowhere near the worst constantly running commercial of the postseason and if nothing else seeing Wood and Dawson a million times beats “Frank TV.”