These Sox shirts still have the curse

Tag : Baseball Shirts

They ordered 220 navy blue tees with “Let’s Keep theAce in Our Place” on the front, and Schilling’sinfamous bloody World Series sock on the reverse. They set up aneBay store. They set up an online petition. They gave away shirtson Mike Adams’ WEEI “Planet Mikey” sports radioshow.
But when they staked out a ballpark sidewalk one night afterSchilling pitched, Austin immediately knew the return on hisinvestment was in jeopardy.
“Fans would look at the shirts and say they were cute, butthey weren’t buying any,” he recalls. “Maybe ifwe had just done the bloody sock thing, we would have done better.The bloody sock is history. It will live around hereforever.”
The friends recruited a female T-shirt model on the Internet andphotographed her by the green Somerset High School baseballbackstop to invoke imagery of the Green Monster. The picture wasprinted on fliers and distributed to about a thousand vehicles inthe Fenway area. Their windshield wiper marketing delivered awhopping two sales.
Kenney believes their dreams were derailed by “Dice-K”mania. Their product launch coincided with a tsunami of memorabiliawelcoming the highly sought-after pitcher from Japan.
“We only sold 17 shirts,” admits Kenney. “And oneof them was to my grandmother, who I just caught using it as a dishrag. She’s not really a baseball fan. She just purchased oneto help out her grandson.”
With Schilling undergoing season-ending shoulder surgery this week,maybe some Sox front office execs will buy a few shirts as areminder of the risks of signing 41-year-old pitchers - no matterhow talented.
Or maybe the Baseball Hall of Fame will snap up the shirts for anexhibit on grassroots fan activism on behalf of gazillionaireathletes.
But as they stare at their 200-plus unsold Schilling shirts, thefriends insist they have no regrets. Their music magazine,“Limelight,” has since come to fruition and has scoreddistribution in Newbury Comics and Daddy’s Junky Music Storelocations.
Some of their first “Limelight” profits were used towipe out their $2,000 T-shirt debt.
“If you’re going to have successes in business, youhave to take chances,” philosophizes Austin. “EvenDonald Trump has gone bankrupt.”
“And if Curt wants a souvenir,” he adds.“We’d be happy to give him a shirt.”