Just think of how sports memorbilia shops must feel. There's 32 teams in the MLB. Any one of them could be in the world series......well......ok, maybe not ANY of them. I don't exactly see the Pirates doing much more then showing up, playing subpar baseball, and crying every night on the bus ride home.
My point is, it's very hard to accurately predict which team gets in, and even harder to predict which team will win once it starts.
So these companies make BOTH versions of the "World Series winner" merchandise. And then half of it never sees the light of day. Year after year. Which means somewhere, out there in the world, may still exist T-Shirts for me to wear, for the 1995, 1997, and 2016 World Series winners.....The Cleveland Indians!!!!
I mean, I'll get crazy looks for wearing them, and people will constantly be like "Uhhhh.....we didn't win....." and I will proceed to not give a shit, because those would be some cool unique shirts to wear!
But as it stands, those guys take an innitial 50% loss on the first batch of merch, just so they have it ready to sell the second the game ends. EVERY year.
I read that they send the loser-winner shirts to poor countries. So you go to some random village and it looks like alternate reality sports land. Except no one there probably even follows the teams/leagues on their shirts.
My buddy in the peace corps stumlbed upon a 2022 Phillies World Series Champs shirt in Ulaanbaatar. I sent him money to buy it since it was so hilarious to see
But as it stands, those guys take an innitial 50% loss on the first batch of merch, just so they have it ready to sell the second the game ends. EVERY year.
Well, they don't really take a loss. The expense of both uniforms are baked into the price of the winning team. it's just part of the overhead. Most the shirts get sent and sold to places that probably only vaguely know who 'the patriots" are.
I mean, I’ll get crazy looks for wearing them, and people will constantly be like “Uhhhh…we didn’t win…” and I will proceed to not give a shit, because those would be some cool unique shirts to wear!
My excuse is "I'm from a different timeline where we won the championship".
"And Gore won the presidency. Heard advanced warnings of 9/11 (bush ignored these warnings), prevented 9/11, and took steps to reverse global warming. I got cocky, and thought maybe the other timelines were better than the official timeline I came from......and I see you guys elected donald trump??? As an overreaction from having the mildest president of black guys in office??? In my timeline we don't even wear pants! I mean, unless it's winter....but year, Ricks out, Dicks out! Oh, every male in my timeline is named Rick. Because they have a dick. And every female has the last name Micucci. No one knows why..."
Well, it's just like the theme song to Cheers goes.
Sometimes you wanna gooooo, where everybody knows your naaaaame. And every Friday is casual masturbation daaaaaay!!! You wanna be where people can see, who has the biggest pee-pee! You wanna go where everybody knows....your name...."
I used to work in merchandising, and it doesn’t exactly work this way. To some extent it does, but there’s a lot more nuance.
When a printing shop gets a contract to do team merch for playoffs, they will be given ALL the possible art, all the possible colors for blank shirts to print on, and a scheduled scenario. For example, after game 2 if the series is tied 1-1, don’t print. If after game 2 the series is 2-0, print 25% of orders for winning team, etc.
The actual margins for the printers isn’t very high. So these types of contracts are necessary. It’s not easy to pack a building of screen printers at short notice to print, and often they end up having to print off hours or weekends.
This isn’t to say some loser shirts are printed. Many are. You may get that Indians shirt someday. It’s kinda a crazy world.
.........I mean, if we're creating false timelines, how about one where Art Modell wasn't a piece of shit, and the BROWNS are 5X superbowl champions......and the Ravens never existed.
I have friends that have seats from Cleveland municipal stadium and have grass from the field that is still growing in their backyard. I also remember the county song of “Art Modell can go to hell” that was played on WMMS, WNCX, or WONE. Can’t remember that station playing those songs lol
I think they would sell body parts or their children before selling those seats lol. Can’t wait to see them in Denver for MNF! Here we go Brownies here we go, wolf wolf!!!
Please tell me you did some face paint on your 4 month old, and took pictures!!! Just some brown snd orange stripes on his cheeks!!!!
I would say do a full face, facepaint, where you paint his whole face brown to look like the dawg pound pound......and then I visualized it in my head. It just looked like very badly done blackface.
Maybe don't do that.....
But brown and orange stripes on his little cheeks would be adorable pictures!!!
I dunno, I suddenly have an urge to sell shirts to maga idiots that read "I liked him before he was a convicted felon." I won't but I think it'd be funny.