The photo of pallets loaded with boxes is of World Series championship shirts headed to retailers. No such luck for the Indians this year. Future Hall of Fame lock GM Theo Epstein’s Cubbies triumphed over the overachieving Terry Francona led Indians. It took not just 7 full games but an extra inning of high drama as well but in the end they were vanquished.

One shirt manufacturer that was happy about the Cubs win had 10 times the returns scheduled if the Cubs lost as with the Indians losing. It might be a little hard to find a Royal Blue (Cubs color) shirt this week, and very easy to find a Navy (Indians) one. Probably lots of heather grey shirts quickly went from Ohio to Illinois. The Cubs won after 108 years and everybody (except White Sox fans) loves the Cubbies so the merch sales on this one will be astronomical.

Being in the Boston New York corridor and only 30 minutes from the New England Patriots stadium we are no strangers to hot market printing and neither is Tom with the Giants seeming to be always winning the World Series.

The company with the MLB license ships you in the shirts and if you win you print night and day, usually until the victory parade. Normally you only print when victory is assured, but I heard that some licensed brands printed tens of thousands of Indians victory shirts when they led 3 games to 1, only to have the Chicago Cubs come back with a vengeance. You won’t see those shirts for sale in the USA, they are usually destroyed or sent to some God-forsaken remote corner of the world. There are folks that release what the shirts would have looked like, but they do so with the peril of risking the anger of the licensed brand folks.  Big brand sports companies keep these things very hush hush and violation of their rules will put you on the World Championship Black List.

If your team loses you have a couple samples as a souvenir of what never happened, you get paid a very little bit for your trouble, the next day you load a whole bunch of blank shirts on to trucks, and your schedule gets real open for a few days.

Here’s what could have been but wasn’t to be: