All those shirts and hats and other paraphernalia get printed up ahead of time so that they’re ready to sell to fans ASAP. But that means that the losing team has pre-printed shirts touting their unsuccessful win. What happens to those?
In years past, once the victors were decided, Major League Baseball (MLB) required the destruction of all the clothing declaring the losers as champions.
But this year Mr. Fields and his colleagues at World Vision, an international Christian humanitarian aid group, will save the erroneously labeled clothing from the incinerators and, instead, send them to impoverished Ghanaians affected by recent flooding.
They also do similar deals with the NFL. They do the same with confiscated counterfeit (unofficial) apparel, too. And it’s not just Rockies fans that might be confused if they visit Ghana.
[T]o be prepared for each team’s potential victory ceremony, the MLB prepares hats and T-shirts – 288 of each item for each team – before each playoff series has been decided. This year, when at least 12 teams were in hard-fought competition for eight playoff spots, league organizers printed apparel for every possible scenario. The result: Thousands of articles of clothing announcing the Padres’, Mets’, and other vanquished teams’ seasonal victories are en route to Ghana.
Cool.