Oh, won’t someone please think of the t-shirt vendors? Manny’s sudden retirement bad for business
Apr 10, 2011, 10:00 AM EDT
Everybody is always looking for the fastball, but sometimes life winds up and throws you that knee-buckling curve for the third strike. Or something. That’s the lesson learned by the down-on-their-luck Tampa baseball fans & proprietors of MannyRay.com, a t-shirt selling website and little piece of the Capitalist spirit set up to cash-in on the arrival of Manny Ramirez to the Sunshine State.
Only problem? Ramirez recorded exactly one hit in his career as a Ray, before abruptly retiring amid reports he was facing a 100-game suspension for his second failed PED test. So yeah, those shirts are now selling like…well, what’s the opposite of hotcakes? The opposite of hotcakes is what they’re selling like.
A group of locals who hatched the idea for a cool Manny/Rays T-shirt spend their own money on a website and product, trying as much to generate interest and goodwill more than profit, agreeing to donate $4 from each sale to the families of St. Petersburg’s slain police officers. Now they’re stuck with about 500 shirts and, according to founder Jacob Reuter, “looking at a huge loss.”
Someones been watching a little too much of The Apprentice, it sounds like. Huge!
It is a shame that a portion of the proceeds were going to given to the families of local police officers killed in the line of duty, as noble a cause as there ever was. But, sports are not static and neither is the world we play them in, and failed drug tests and sudden retirements are things that can happen.
After all, as West Baltimore street legend and noted early-21st century philosopher Omar Little said, “All in the game, yo. It’s all in the game.”
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The real losers of Manny Ramirez’s exit from the Tampa Bay Rays [St. Petersburg Times]
