125 Million Dollar Spokeman

Jason Giambi gets paid millions to play baseball and endorse World Series Baseball for the Xbox. But has he ever been in the same room as a video game?

The Oakland sun pours down on the beloved and hated alike, and New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi is ready for his shave. Giambi, who’s being interviewed by a local San Francisco news station, hardly has time to notice Oakland Athletics infielder Frank Menechino sneaking up on him, a plate full of shaving cream in his hand. By the time it’s all said and done, Giambi looks like a pissed Stay-Puft marshmallow man.

But instead of committing homicide in a particularly inventive and gruesome way, Giambi mops himself off and begins to laugh. You’d laugh, too, if you left the open cesspool known as Oakland and its baseball team the Oakland A’s to move to the greatest city on Earth to play for the New York Yankees—especially if the Yankees were paying you $125 million to do it. In fact, on the entirety of the Oakland Coliseum ball field, there is no happier human being than Giambi.

And why not? When he’s done with the television interview, he’ll plop his huge, muscular frame onto the seats of the visitor’s dugout to plug World Series Baseball a video game that Sega’s paid him to be the spokesman for. Later, he’ll stick it to Menechino, the A’s, and all the Oakland fans who consider him to be worse than Satan, Hitler, and Barney the purple dinosaur combined by going 2-for-4 with three runs batted in (RBIs).

Giambi is 6-foot-3-inches, and built like a Sherman tank. His handshake is paralyzing. Still, his smile is friendly and he isn’t moved to manslaughter when his practice jersey is touched.

Xbox Nation: That’s nice. What is that, velvet?

Jason Giambi: [Laughs] Oh, no. This isn’t velvet. It should be, though. When you play for the Yankees everything is unbelievable.

XBN: If you hit a home run today, will you pause dramatically, point up to the cheap seats, and yell “That was for you, William Howard Taft!”?

Giambi: [Laughs] No, I don’t think I will. No, because I still may have to bat again, and I might end up wearing one in my ear.

XBN: Is it true if you’re playing first base for the Yankees and you’re at Yankee Stadium the ghost of Lou Gehrig will actually berate you if you’re not shading a hitter the right way or holding a runner on incorrectly?

Giambi: Well, there’s a lot of tradition that goes on there. You look down and Babe Ruth, you know the house that Ruth built, and Gehrig and [Mickey) Mantle and [Joe] DiMaggio—so it’s pretty unbelievable to have those ghosts laying over the top of the stadium. When you think about it, of all those great names who have put on the pinstripes and it’s definitely a proud tradition. It’s great to be a part of.

XBN: What exactly are your duties as spokesman for World Series Baseball?

Giambi: The biggest thing is you go in there and you do all the motion capture and you promote the game and things like that. Like I’ve said, I’m so excited to be a part of the Sega name and World Series Baseball because the game is so realistic. When you look out there from home plate the view that you’d be looking out at, say, any stadium that’s the exact view I see when I’m actually playing on the field. So it’s basically the closest thing to actually being on the field.

XBN: What happens if you’re not able to complete your duties? Will Sega take your thumbs?

Giambi: Yeah, and then I won’t be able to play the game anymore. That would be rough. I don’t know if I’d be able to handle that, because I enjoy playing, video games. I’ve played since I was a kid.

XBN: Your teammate Derek Jeter is the spokesman for Acclaim’s All-Star Baseball. Did he give you any advice on the trials and tribulations of spokesmanship?

Giambi: No, he didn’t. Now, we’re rivals as it goes in the video game world. No, we’ve been having a good time with it, you know, he’s great with it. So, like I’ve said, anytime you get an opportunity to be behind something that’s great and that you enjoy doing—and I’ve been playing video games since I was a kid. It’s the cool part of being a big leaguer.

XBN: What systems did you play?

Giambi: When I was a kid? You know, I had even before Sega came out with the Xbox and everything else, I had, you know Sega and I also had, let’s see, with the uh, the biggest one, you know, some PlayStation, but Sega was the biggest one that I ended up having as a kid.

XBN: Do you ever write poems inside your glove like Allie Caufield from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye?

Giambi: No, you know I’m pretty anal about keeping my glove in great shape and I’ve had the same glove for about the last seven years—I try to touch it up and keep it all together. There are some guys who write on the top of their hats, other guys do their little rituals at the plate, but I’m pretty basic. The only one [ritual] I do is I put my uniform on the same way every day.

XBN: When batters reach first base, do you ever torment them by asking how come they’ve never been picked to promote a baseball game?

Giambi: No, the biggest thing is that when you get to first base, the most things you talk about are the girls in the first row, what’s going on in the game, you know, and sometimes things really unrelated to baseball.

XBN: Are you going to give your brother Jeremy a nougie or a wedgie if he gets to first base?

Giambi: [Laughs] No. We grew up as best friends, so it’s great that he’s doing well this year. It’s one of the biggest things I miss not being with the A’s is my brother, because it was pretty special to grow up and be on the same field as your brother. It doesn’t get any better than that.

XBN: What do you think of Sega’s strategy of shifting from a hardware developer to a strictly platform-agnostic content publisher?

Giambi: I think it’s great move on their part. I think they really feel that’s where the market’s at and they can be more realistic. I think them switching over, you know, they’re trying to tap a new part of the market that’s really not been tapped into.

XBN: Have you played World Series Baseball yet?

Giambi: I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it. We haven’t finished up everything that they need to go with the game. Because of [Sega) being out here in the Bay area and me in New York, I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to see a lot of things that have gone on with the game.

XBN: What was the motion capture process like?

Giambi: We haven’t done the motion capture yet. We’ve still got that in the works. It’s definitely going to be cool, you know the way they described it. You get to put on the wet suit and throw out the little ping-pong balls. That’s what it makes it so realistic: because it’s actually you swinging the bat, it’s actually you throwing the ball or sliding or whatever they want you to do. That’s the fun part of the game.

XBN: Do you believe that Union general Abner Doubleday created baseball or do you believe in a more evolutionary theory, as put forth by anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould?

Giambi: [Laughs] Well, first of all, it probably would have helped if I had finished college—I’m just kidding. You know, I think everybody wants to have this big to do about how this game was started. I think Doubleday was a big part of how the game got started, but that’s always up for debate. I really don’t know where it actually started, but the way everybody talks about it, Abner Doubleday did.