reveries - body by jake - major league lacrosse

JUNE 2002

I'd much rather be the guy driving it off the cliff, says 'Body By Jake' Steinfeld. If I'm going to fail, Jake says, let me do it on my own terms…

Okay, we'll give you a little context now. During a trip to Detroit in 1998 -- Jake was thinking, well, there's not much that he could do to change the face of major league baseball.

So there he was, on the plane ride home, thumbing through Swing, David Lauren's magazine for twentysomethings. He comes across this article with a picture of this guy holding a lacrosse stick. He thinks, jeez -- lacrosse! I haven't seen that in a hundred years...

Well, maybe more like 20 years, which was when Jake played the game himself at Cortland College out on Long Island. But, anyway, Jake started reading this article about this kid named Dave Morrow, and he was intrigued. It wasn't that Morrow grew up in Detroit, was a hockey player before a teacher turned him onto lacrosse, and then he got into Princeton, became an All-American and won a national title.

That was pretty cool, sure, but what intrigued Jake was that Dave Morrow had started a company called Warrior Lacrosse. To Jake, that sounded a whole heck of a lot like a young Phil Knight at Nike. So Jake is thinking, this guy is onto something. You know, this guy is marketing a lacrosse stick like he's selling a fragrance or apparel or something really cool. He's selling a lifestyle.

So Jake rang up Dave and said, look -- is there such a thing as professional outdoor lacrosse? Is there a governing body for the outdoor game? Dave said there wasn't. Jake said, well, there is now.

The next guy he called, the first guy he always calls, was Tim Robertson -- you know, the Rev. Pat Robertson's son? Jake did a sitcom for him on The Family Channel, and launched a cable fitness network, FIT TV, with him.

Americans love hitting, scoring and speed -- and lacrosse has it all.

Jake picked up the phone and said, T -- here's the idea -- professional outdoor lacrosse. Tim says, Stop there, Jake; I'm in.

So the three amigos -- Tim, Jake, and Dave -- set out to do something that has never been done before in the sport of lacrosse ... to put it into the Big Leagues.

It all happened like just about everything else in Jake's life since around 1980 -- that is to say, it happened like magic.

"I was actually a fat kid with a bad stutter," Jake explains. "At 14 years old, my dad bought me a set of weights and it changed my life." Not only did the weights build his body, they built his self-esteem. His stutter went away, and Jake left for Hollywood with a dream to become Mr. America.

That particular part of the fairy tale went pumpkin, actually. After placing second to a guy on steroids in the Mr. Southern California contest, Jake decided to give up on pageants and just hang out in Hollywood for a while. He was bouncing bars at night and relaxing poolside by day when he was approached by a young actress who asked him to help her get in shape for a TV commercial shoot.

Jake scratched his head and came up with this workout, basically just improvising using a broomstick, a towel and a chair. The workout was not intimidating, but it was very effective. The whole town noticed, and the actress -- Sandra Will -- told all her friends about Jake: Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Steve Ross, George Lucas, Priscilla Presley, Bette Midler and Warren Beatty, to name just a few.

Next thing Jake knows, he's Body By Jake, he's being written up in People Magazine and Ted Turner's on the line asking him to do a fitness show on his new television network, CNN. Hey, gang, I'm Jake of Body By Jake with your fitness tip of the day… That led to a book, video and record deal -- an integrated multi-media package that in 1984 was way, way ahead of its time. Packaged it up like a movie launch, basically.

I said was going to become Mr. America and my friends said, "Yeah, right. You're a fat bastard -- you're not going to be anything. You'll be home in six months."

A flukey meeting with someone from Pat Robertson's fledgling Christian Broadcasting Network resulted in an even more unlikely meeting with Robertson's son, Tim. The irony is not lost on Jake: I'm a Jewish guy from Brooklyn, man… But Tim was sold instantly on Jake's sitcom idea and Big Brother Jake -- where he plays big brother to five foster kids -- ended up doing 100 episodes between 1990 and 1995.

"I was like the Jackie Robinson of The Family Channel," Jake laughs.

In '93, Tim backed Jake to launch FIT TV, which subsequently was sold to Fox Sports in '98. By '99, Jake's thinking, what to do next? Minor league baseball? What -- so he could own the Delaware Dickweeds and have clowns running around the infield? Nah.

Well, hey, buddy -- what are you talking about here, man -- lacrosse…?

Lacrosse actually is the oldest American game. It's older than baseball. It's a Native American game. I asked Dave Morrow a lot of questions in our first meetings. And the thing that I kept driving back to, which is the question that every reporter, every potential investor -- everybody -- asks is, is this game only played in the Northeast?

And Dave said to me, "Jake, let me show you." And with his sales figures he was showing me -- and this was '98 -- we're seeing growth in Atlanta, in Orlando, in Columbus, in Salt Lake City, in Denver, in San Diego and in San Francisco. So I said, "Okay, we're on to something here."

We decided, let's put our flag in the sand: We are Major League Lacrosse. The great thing about it is that because we control the league, we are able to take this great game and tweak it a bit, to make it appeal to sports fans.

And I had a few ideas about that. People talk about lacrosse being the fastest game on two feet. And I said, sure, it's the fastest game on two feet, but with the slowest-looking uniforms! With Dave's company, with Warrior Lacrosse, we were able to experiment with a lot of different things. We've redesigned the jerseys, the helmets -- everything.

We also wanted to embrace the immediate community, the lacrosse community. It is a very small community, although lacrosse happens to be the fastest-growing game in the country. But I wanted to make sure that the game played on television, because if you're on television, and it works, you will succeed.

We had to make sure that the television program was every bit as entertaining as an NFL game, an NBA game or an NHL game -- any major league sport. I said, I'd like to put in a forty-five second shot clock, to really push the offense.

And then I also said, I'm going to add a two-point arc -- like a three-point play in basketball. I felt we needed to add a little more scoring here, and give a shot if there's a minute left in the game. With the two-point arc, it can be pretty interesting.

Dave Morrow legitimized me instantly in the lacrosse community, because, hey, I didn't know anybody in this game.

I'd love for lacrosse to be as big as everything else out there. But we're not putting a time-line on this thing. We're not going to say that in year three we're going to be in 40 markets. We are going to grow it slowly. This game has been around longer than baseball, and we're not going to screw it up now!

I decided that if we were going to do this thing properly, we needed to test our product. You know, shoot a pilot, like in television. So rather than trying just one game, I said, let's do a six-episode pick-up. Let's see if we can get the 40 best players in the world. Let's see if we can get to play lacrosse in six markets. Let's see if people will pay for tickets and let's see if it works on television.

Last year, we went out and spent what we considered to be a lot of money for television. We had a game of the week on in about 11 or 12 million homes. We had four games that aired nationally on Fox Sport Net. We actually did pretty well with it.

But this summer, I said, you know what, let's see if we can create a lacrosse television network. So rather than last year, when we had a two-hour show, now we have a 2-1/2 hour block. We're going to have time to do a pre- and post- game show.

SoBe was the first sponsor in. They liked it so much they have a team named after them now -- The Long Island Lizards.

Now we have a dedicated Sunday in 52 million homes, every single Sunday, starting June the 16th, called Sunday Showdown, in 52 million homes. That ain't chopped liver, man.

We're going to move to two more markets next summer. We are also looking at Philadelphia, Columbus (Ohio), Atlanta, Washington, DC and Denver -- not in that order, but from east to west. That's the goal. But we're going to do it slowly, methodically. We're going to make sure that everything is sticking.

What we're creating is a lacrosse lifestyle. That's what Anheuser Busch, Merrill Lynch, Sobe and Reebok are all buying into and enjoying. It's different. This is a new game, baby. This is not the three-on-three stickball league.

We have said on a number of occasions that our Michael Jordan would be Casey Powell, who is just an incredible talent. Casey graduated from Syracuse. He was an all-time leading scorer at Syracuse until his brother Ryan came along -- and Ryan plays in the league too. Casey plays for Long Island, Ryan plays for the Rochester Rattlers.

Casey and Ryan Powell are just two very classy guys. The kids just love Casey. Kids want to be him, dress like him, act like him and shoot like him. He's a stand-up guy, a first-class kid and he embodies what Major League Lacrosse is all about. We have educated, Ivy League players on the field. Every mother would want her daughter to marry a Major League Lacrosse player!

But there really is not one superstar that outshines this league. It's the game itself that is the star. Every team -- from the first guy to the 20th guy -- is a one-, two-, three-, or four-time All-American. I mean -- it's insane.

Major League Baseball would die for our demographic. The kids skew from 6 to 60 and they're out there in full force. You talk about a demographic that has college-educated fans -- it's that golf demographic, it's that tennis demographic.

Kids today want a sport to call their own, and what we're finding out is that it's lacrosse. It's cool.

We know it's going to be big. It's just a matter of how long it's going to take us to get there. It's not if -- it's just when. And I've always said this, too: The world lets you be what you make them believe you are, and if you tell people that you've got the best, and you can prove it, they are there for you, and they will return. The lacrosse fan is a very embracing fan.

It's just so much fun to see when a kid gets introduced to this game. You put a stick in a guy's hand, you know, and it's just amazing to see. The parents come up to you and they say, this is amazing, I wish I played this game. It’s just a whole heck of a lot of fun. At the end of the day, you sort of sit back and it's about the journey, really.

Hey, listen, I get told "no" at least seventeen times a day. But it's the one "yes" that makes it refreshing and exciting and gives me the juice to keep running.