GLENDALE, Calif. — It's one of those feel-good videos. You know the ones, where someone surprises unwitting shoppers with free gifts.
"What do you think is better, giving gifts or receiving gifts?" influencer Jacqui Saldana asked a family of four in the commercial JC Penney made over Christmas.
"For me it's more meaningful when the kids are excited about giving something," the father responded.
But that wasn't just any father out shopping with his family in Glendale, Calif. Internet sleuths this week pointed out it was Adrian Beltre, the iconic Rangers third baseman who retired in November.
Once the video was discovered, the Internet lost its mind, saying that JC Penney hadn't even recognized the future hall of famer.
We wondered if other people might not recognize him, either. So we went to downtown Fort Worth with a microphone and the video loaded on our phone to find out.
Person after person was swinging and missing, failing to identify who was famous in the video.
"He looked very familiar, " Doug White said. "It's not Beltre, is it?"
Ding ding!
Only one group recognized him immediately.
"When he's out of the uniform, shopping at JC Penney ... he looked like a regular guy!" Joan Ott said.
A JC Penney spokeswoman Friday called the commercial a "happy, random act." She confirmed they didn't recognize Beltre until after the interview, and, humbly, he didn't announce who he was. But because the video was about the "act of giving," they chose not to "call out Adrian in this video," the spokeswoman said.
Indeed, Beltre did give.
"Can we actually give that gift and donate it to someone?" he asked in the video, reminding North Texas why we loved him so much, whether we recognize him or not.