Larry Bird and Legends Wine: Exceeding the Limits of Plausible Endorsement Deals?

Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe scripts a humorous column today on Larry Bird endorsing an $80 bottle of wine called "Legends." (Shaughnessy, "It's Vintage Bird," Boston Globe, 4/21/2006). Shaughnessy finds it ridiculous that Bird would claim any expertise in wine, and particularly wine from Napa Valley:

I removed the bottle of red (Meritage) from the box, looked at the label (2003 Napa Valley), and started to giggle. Napa Valley? Please. The closest Larry ever got to Napa Valley was when the Celtics played the Warriors at the old Oakland Coliseum. It's truly impossible to imagine him doing the ''Sideways" thing, twirling wine in his mouth, then announcing, ''Quaffable, but not transcendent."

This is a guy who would not know oakey from Charles Oakley. It's simply more proof that our pal Larry will do anything for money (which, by the way, makes him OK in my book). Who can forget the day back in the 1980s when Larry was spotted wearing a hideous short-sleeve shirt -- a shirt your mother might have bought you for the first day of first grade -- and acknowledged, ''I'll wear anything if it's free."

And now the all-time beer guy has put his name on a bottle of wine. Can't fool us. We know better. Colleague Bob Ryan, Bird's official biographer, said, ''I never saw him drink anything but beer." Larry and beer were always the best of friends. Like Ryan, I know this firsthand. Back in his MVP years in the mid-1980s, he caught me drinking a Molson one night and said, ''I never drink beer that comes in a green bottle. It all goes back to a party one night in college. I picked up the wrong bottle, a green one, and started chugging and didn't know what was happening until that third cigarette butt went down my throat. That was it for me and green bottles."

Eighty bucks per bottle. That killed me. I mean, we're talking about Larry Bird here. This is the man who refused to leave a tip when he went out to eat in New York his rookie year. He just couldn't believe the price of lunch in Manhattan in 1979. In 1992, when he was in Monte Carlo with the Olympic Dream Team, he walked out of a lounge when the barkeep told him he owed 7 bucks for his bottle of beer.

Shaughnessy's column brings to mind how becoming a product endorser does not require any credible expertise or even interest in the product. Along those lines, you might ask, is George Foreman really an expert on grills, or might his endorsement be more motivated by a $137 million contract? Does Maria Sharapova drive Ford Land Rovers on a regular basis, or have any idea how they compare to similar cars? Lance Armstrong clearly knows a lot about bicycles, but should we assume the same to be true about jets?

That's not to say that all athlete endorsements are suspect. Michael Jordan and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps probably do drink Gatorade, and the idea of Kevin Garnett drinking Red Bull seems believable. I also find it believable that David Ortiz and Shaquille O'Neal would regularly play baseball and basketball video games, and to bolster that point, they appear to be intricately involved in the making of those games. Many athletes also endorse shoe companies, and Lebron James, Allen Iverson, and Venus Williams obviously know a thing or two about sneakers.

But as we see with Larry Bird and "Legends" wine, sometimes the product endorsement seems completely unrelated to the endorser, and those kinds of endorsements almost invite a plug for Consumer Reports Magazine. Of course, that magazine won't help us when athletes endorse politicians, but it's probably a good start.

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