The Nats are giving away a Jayson Werth Chia Pet with a growing beard
The Washington Nationals are embracing Jayson Werth’s beard like never before. The team announced its promotional schedule Friday and it includes a Werth Chia Pet with a growing beard.
If ever there were a perfect pairing of player and giveaway, this is it.
The Werth Chia Pet will be given away to the first 20,000 fans on Aug. 5, when the Nats play the Arizona Diamondbacks. The team’s Werth garden gnome giveaway was a hit last year (so big that they’re doing one for Anthony Rendon in 2015), so the Nats figure the Werth Chia Pet will be even bigger.
From Dan Steinberg of The Washington Post’s D.C. Sports Bog, who talked to Valerie Camillo, the Nats’ chief revenue and marketing officer:
The Werth giveaway will actually be Chia Pet-branded, and figures to be among the most desired of promotional items.
“The gnome was so fantastic, and we felt like we had to push the envelope,” Camillo said. “We were just thinking of something creative that people would get into, and Jayson is such a personality and lends himself so well to this sort of promotional fun, probably better than the average player….The first time that was mentioned, it was like, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ Then it was a matter of please don’t let it be too expensive.”
A Chia Pet with a beard is unchartered territory in the land of baseball giveaways, but Chia has made them before. Specifically for the stars of “Duck Dynasty.” This is an actual dream come true for Werth-worshipping Nats fans, like our pals at The Nationals Archive and the @JWerthsBeard Twitter account, who had previously mocked up such an idea:
We think this might be the coolest MLB giveaway since the Coco Crisp “Bernie Lean” bobblehead. And it’s certainly better than a Jayson Werth-behind-bars bobblehead.
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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
