Today, David Ortiz, A.K.A. “Big Papi,” will be playing his last game at Yankee Stadium. While there’s a small group of fellow Yankee fans planning on mooning him during the ceremony, myself and the rest of Carrot will be standing and clapping for David. Even if he doesn’t seem to mind, we just can’t condone that kind of behavior because David is actually one of the reasons Carrot Creative has worked with so many world-class athletes and organizations over the years.

As die-hard Yankee fans, you need to understand that the Red Sox and, hence, Big Papi, are our sworn enemies.

Me and my Dad. I was born into a Yankees family.

Back in 2009, when Facebook was on its way to becoming the mega-platform that it is today, a lot of brands and celebrities were still learning how to leverage the network.

Facebook had just come out with something called fan pages so that celebs could interact with fans. At the time, they didn’t have a single baseball player involved so they worked with the MLB to get players online. Crazy to think this was less than seven years ago! Since Carrot had built the MLB Facebook App when the platform first opened, they got us in touch with a team that was looking to get one of its star players a fan page. Our relatively young company was thrilled to do more work with the MLB, but then we saw who it was for… David Ortiz.

Imagine what it would feel like if you’re Batman and the Joker came to you one day looking for a ride to the airport.

As huge Yankee fans, the last thing we wanted to do was help a Red Sox Player. However, as a small company we prided ourselves for doing “firsts” on digital platforms and this was definitely a first. We even had a chance to talk to David and his agent to hear about the deep and obvious passion he had for the game, and for connecting with fans. The cognitive dissonance here was terrible. My Dad doesn’t even know we did work for David Ortiz until right now when he reads this blog post. (Sorry Dad)

After several hours of screaming and crying amongst ourselves, I made my business partners promise that we’d take the job and that any profit we made from this would HAVE to go toward a company trip to a Yankees game. It was the only way we could stomach the work.

We built the first Facebook fan page for any athlete and took on almost all of David’s social profiles. Back then, Facebook wasn’t the slick and WYSIWYG editor it is now. Lots of custom coding, back-and-forth calls with the clients, and experimentation.

It was a fun challenge to work on a project that we knew was filled with firsts and making a lot of people happy… even though it wasn’t Yankees fans. He would post videos directly to his fans talking about the season. He used it to push support to his foundation. Occasionally, we would get texts from David and his people and update Facebook with whatever he was thinking that day. As a Yankees fan, it was killing me that we helped him communicate with his fans. All these people were posting their love for David and the team. If only they knew that a bunch of Yankees fans were behind it at the time. As a fan of the game, it was rewarding to read his diehard fans comment and interact with their hero, but it took a lot of strength to keep managing the profiles right after a Yankees’ loss to the Red Sox.

He was really a trailblazer. While all this seems normal today, 10 years ago most athletes were only doing this through talk radio and live events. It’s amazing to think that some of the stuff we worked on with David set an example for thousands of players after him.

We managed the page till the end of the season and then handed it off to his team. No longer would a couple of Yankees fans from New York be behind the David Ortiz online identity. You’d better believe that we were very tempted to post “I LOVE THE YANKEES” before we handed the keys back over… but we didn’t have the balls to do it in the end. Instead, we posted some well-wishes on the Facebook walls of some good friends who are Red Sox fans.

While this was just a small project, it was one of the first clients that gave us credibility and lots of recommendations. We have done work for the biggest brands in the world but it was always sports that made us happy. Since that little experiment, we have gone on to work with Michael Phelps, Steph Curry, Kobayashi, Sebastian Vettel, Wimbledon, NFL, NBA, ESPN, and the Super Bowl Committee.

But most importantly, last year the Yankees selected Carrot Creative as their agency.

Imagine if your high school bully ended up being the person who introduced you to your future wife.

So, tomorrow when we take the tickets we designed for the game and sit in our season ticket seats and watch you bat for the last time, my fellow Carrots and I will be standing and cheering David on.

David, congrats on having an amazing career and thanks for helping a couple of Yankees fans with a dream achieve theirs. You’ve done amazing things for the game and you’ll continue to do be incredible in everything you do afterwards.

Love/Hate,

Mike Germano and all of Carrot Creative

Yankee Tickets Designed By Carrot Creative

One of the five TV spots created for the Yankees by Carrot Creative

P.S. For every bare ass you have to see tonight, we’ll donate $10 to your awesome children’s foundation.