ASHBURN — The boy who starred in the touching Nike "Someday" TV spot that aired after the Cubs won the World Series is a South Sider who plays on a White Sox-sponsored youth league and who'd never acted before the commercial was filmed in West Town's Eckhart Park.
For the record, 12-year-old Brandon Rogers — who lives in Ashburn with his dad, Chicago firefighter Michael Rogers, mom Lisa Rogers and his younger sister — roots for both teams.
"My guy on the Cubs is [centerfielder] Dexter Fowler and on the White Sox it's [first baseman] Jose Abreu," said Brandon, a utility player on a White Sox Amateur City Elite team.
The commercial was filmed a year ago when Brandon was 11. The short initially was filmed after the Cubs made the 2015 playoffs, in hopes that the team would win the World Series then.
Brandon joined the White Sox youth league last year after having played with the Cangelosi Blacksox in Lockport. A staffer with Auburn's Bo Jackson Give Me a Chance Foundation, which connects city kids to the Lockport team who'd heard about the planned Nike commercial called Brandon's mom and told her "you have to take Brandon [to audition]," she recalled.
In the minutelong spot, Brandon, wearing a Cubs uniform, imagines he is in the middle of a World Series game in Eckhart Park, 1330 W. Chicago Ave.
The filming was on a Saturday, at the end of a whirlwind week where Lisa Rogers juggled the family's schedule and scrambled to get a work permit signed off on by the principal of Vanderpoel Elementary in Beverly, where Brandon was a sixth-grader at the time.
Brandon, who plays three sports — football, baseball and track — had never acted before the commercial.
Lisa Rogers describes her son as "a natural performer" whose personality made him stand out from what she saw as "an endless rotation of boys" during the first and second auditions, when about 1,000 boys were narrowed down to a few hundred.
After the first audition, which was closed off to parents, Rogers said that when she and Brandon were out of earshot from the other boys, he said, "Mommy, mommy, I killed it!"
"I was laughing at him and was like OK, I will accept it," Rogers said.
At the callback at the North Side's Lil Sluggers ball park, the boys were asked to pretend to hit a ground ball and narrate their own game. This time, parents were able to sit in the stands and watch.
"That [script] was so Brandon," Rogers said.
But when she got the call a day later that Brandon had won the part, she was shocked, she said. She broke the news to Brandon while picking him up from school, and he "dropped to the floor of the truck."
Like the actual World Series Game 7, there was a rain delay that required a break in filming on the long Saturday when the spot was filmed.
"He was a little worried during the actual filming," Rogers said.
After a few hours, Brandon's energy fizzled and he was tearing up, a painful scene to witness, but it was quickly rectified after a mom-and-son talk and a lunch that one of the crew hands secured just for Brandon from Burger King. None of the catered food appealed to him.
"We had not had a conversation about what to expect on the day of filming because we were new to this. He told me, 'Mommy, they keep saying 'cut' like I messed it up, and I am doing bad.' After [the talk], he was good again. He understood cut does not mean you're doing terrible. It just means they want to stop there," she said.
Brandon said hearing the word "cut" again and again was hurting him.
"I was not nervous at first, until I heard them saying cut. Then I talked to my mom and got more comfortable knowing they are just trying to get the best part to put into the commercial and they say cut for that," he said.
Brandon was disappointed last year when the commercial was held after the Cubs were eliminated by the Mets in National League Championship Series, but his faith in the team "never wavered," his mom said.
"This year, he said, 'The Cubs are going to win, they are going to show my commercial.' He was very hopeful, and my husband and I were like, we hope they show it,'" Rogers said.
During the seventh inning of Game 7, Rogers said she "had to walk out of the room."
"My heart was pounding. When it got tied up, he got quiet. I'm sweating, my daughter's in bed, and Brandon is a bundle of nerves," she said.
When the Cubs won, her husband, Fire Department Lt. Michael Rogers, was on Facetime from a firehouse.
"We started tearing up, and everyone was going crazy at the firehouse," she said.
Minutes later, Brandon "started screaming," and she was worried. She rushed back into her son's bedroom, where he has a television.
"He was pointing at the TV, screaming 'My commercial!" Rogers recalled.
Since the commercial aired on Nov. 4, Brandon has had one brush with fame, when, at the Cubs parade, fans recognized him as the boy from the Nike commercial.
Some folks, like his peers at his new school, Owen Scholastic Academy, didn't believe that he had been in a commercial.
"My teachers got the link [to the commercial] and downloaded it, so the whole class could watch. I asked them to show the commercial because my classmates could not believe it," he said.
Screen shots from the minute long "Someday" spot. [Youtube/Nike]
Brandon Rogers in his track uniform (left) and at the Cubs celebration parade. [Lisa Rogers]
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here.
