Mini Sirloin Burger Night at Dodger Stadium

Yippie-I-Ay!

Sons of Steve Garvey would like to say a big thank you to Josh Rawitch (Vice President, Communications) and Drew Merle (Assistant Director, Business and Entertainment Public Relations) for organizing Mini Sirloin Burger Night at Dodger Stadium for a lucky group of Dodger bloggers.

As you may or may not know, Jack in the Box is running a promotion in which fans at the game receive a coupon for a free order of Mini Sirloin Burgers (with soft drink purchase) if the Dodgers win by at least three runs. We didn't think the Communications department could top last year's Blogger Night, but somehow they arranged a lopsided Dodger win for tonight's game so we'd get Mini Sirloin Burger coupons at the end. PR people: Is there anything they can't do?

Oh yeah, we also got to watch the game from a suite, meet our fellow bloggers and have some Q&A face-time with several Dodger bigwigs.

My first game of the year—and first time seeing these new banners: Ethier, Kemp, Ramirez, Martin.

Suite!

The recipients of the Mini Sirloin Burger coupons:

• Howard of BaseballSavvy.com
• Ernest of Blue Heaven
• Robert of DodgerDugout.com
• Chris of dodgerfan.net
• a fellow from Dodger Sims—I'm sorry I didn't catch your name
• Jon of Dodger Thoughts
• Bob, formerly of The Griddle (and currently of One Through Forty-Two or Forty-Three)
• Ken of isportsweb
• Mark (all the way from Indiana!) and Miguel of LADodgerTalk.com
• Andy and Lisa of LAist
• Robert of Trolley Dodger
• Eric and Phil of True Blue LA

(Apologies for any omissions and/or misremembered names—please send in corrections!)

While we were waiting to collect our coupons, Rawitch brought in several guests to help kill the time. Batting leadoff was Ned Colletti (General Manager):

Rawitch and Colletti.

Colletti is a pretty straightforward guy. He looks you in the eye and gives fairly candid, but measured, responses. I asked him about his current position on long-terming some of the youngsters and he mentioned how the expectations of agents as well as the current economy could affect such talks. I also asked about Matt Kemp's improvement, and Colletti confirmed the reports we've been hearing about Kemp finally buying into Joe Torre's system, singling out Don Mattingly and Jeff Pentland for praise.

"It's a baseball season, not a baseball month," Colletti said more than once. If there's one person who can't simply enjoy the Dodgers' hot streak right now, it's him.

Next up was Dr. Charles Steinberg (Executive Vice President, Creative and Communications):

Rawitch and Steinberg.

Now here's someone who really seems to enjoy his job. Steinberg has a passion for music, which was evident when he recounted the story of how Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" became the Dodgers' eighth-inning song of choice. Although I don't think we need an eighth-inning song, let alone one by Journey, Steinberg made it clear it wasn't an arbitrary choice. He discussed the power of communal singing, and how some tunes work just okay, and how some tunes just click. "Don't Stop Believing" just clicked.

Josh Lukin (Director, Direct Response Marketing) shared a few words about monetizing, press releaser extraordinaire Amy Summers (Supervisor, Public Relations) dropped by to say hi, and our DodgerTalk peeps Ken Levine and Josh Suchon also made an appearance. Ken and Josh actually spent quite a bit of time circulating around the room; the guys just love talkin' baseball.

Oh yeah, there was also a game:

Kemp bats.

"Good job, boys! Now everybody be sure to get your Mini Sirloin Burger coupon from Bowa!"

And yes, there were free Dodger Dogs (gotta give those Mini Sirloin Burgers something to land on!).

There she is.

UPDATE:

Howard Cole of BaseballSavvy.com has a, er, savvy follow-up:

I followed up with Communications VP, Josh Rawitch today, and asked him if he knew about Manny while he was meeting with us, and he responded quickly, on the record, that he didn’t. Which is good enough for me.