If you look hard enough online (as in…Google “T-Shirts”), you can find sites that sell unlicensed and unofficial t-shirts. These T-shirts feature designs created by fans and basically only are allowed to exist because they are fairly small-scale operations- the equivalent of those random guys outside of a stadium- and no company is willing to sue them to oblivion because of the bad PR that would result from going after people who in essence are their biggest fans would be…bad. In addition, a lot (but certainly nowhere near all) of the t-shirts don’t technically break any laws and don’t actually use anything trademarked or copyrighted.
So, what type of stuff are we talking about?
Sandlot Swag
“The Sandlot’, of course, is the greatest baseball movie of the 1990s, a true classic. And yet to the best of my knowledge the amount of merchandising around about it is minimal. Thankfully, the internet has decided to fix that. Over at the Neatoshop, for example, Beware 1984 has a awesome shirt that reminds us that while heroes get remembered, legends never die:
At Teepublic, Trevorduntposterdesign has this classy baseball card shirt:
But of course, no Sandlot wardrobe is complete without…
A Ton of Mets Stuff
Perhaps it is because of the the Mets quirky younger-brother status. Maybe the good year they are having has something to do with it. Either way, there are a ton of unofficial Mets T-shirts for sale online. Oh, there are some neat but not exactly amazing word-cloud shirts and this tribute to Game Six of the 1986 World Series, but what about shirts that take advantage of Mets fans love of giving their players superhero nicknames?
Yes, that’s a t-shirt featuring a cartoon Noah Syndergaard dressed as his superheroic nickname, Thor, God of Thunder. It was created by somebody called “Loudegg”, who also has a shirt featuring not only “Thor Syndergaard” but also Jacob deGrom as the Terminator and Matt Harvey as the Dark Knight, Batman. He also has this delightful t-shirt that pays tribute to the most beloved hitter in baseball…Bartolo Colon:
In addition, elsewhere you can get a Captain America shield T-Shirt paying tribute to David Wright.
Also, it should be noted that Mets fans love their SNY broadcast team so much they have TWO t-shirts paying tribute to them. There’s this shirt from “Kellyoconnell” (which also comes in a non-color version)…
Finally for Mets fans who love themselves some classic Nintendo, there’s this T-shirt for the New York…Metroids:
MLB Logo Variations:
The MLB logo is notable for being the only logo of the Big Four sports to have had another member of the Big Four admittedly ape it. So perhaps it’s not surprising that plenty of artists and T-shirt makers have decided to also imitate it.
Like, have you ever wanted to wear a MLB-logo t-shirt with Charlie Brown on it? I have, which I why if there are any family members or friends of mine reading this, please go here and purchase this for me immediately:
But are Nintendo games more your thing? Well, good news, there are plenty of MLB-style shirts paying tribute to Mario and his friends.
Or what about other stuff that isn’t even pretending to be baseball-related but still looks good when it’s in MLB Logo form?
Y’know, like “Doctor Who”:
Or “Star Wars”:
The Completely Fictional Teams:
What are baseball fans of non-baseball-related things supposed to do if they want to combine their love of baseball with their love of the other thing? Presumably pick out shirts that show fictional baseball teams from those worlds, like…
This shirt that pays tribute to the classic video game Bioshock:
For the Trekkies among you, there’s a shirt for the Starfleet Academy Captains:
And of course, when it comes to superheroes, some people have made sports t-shirts for some of those teams that have shown up in Bizarre Baseball Culture.
Like the Metropolis Meteors:
Or the Gotham Knights (there are several Gotham Knights shirts out there, but I like this one the best):
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Hey, need more unlicensed t-shirt goodness? Head on over to Baseball Continuum and read the whole post in its entirety!
The post The Best Unlicensed/Unofficial Baseball T-Shirts on the Internet appeared first on Hall of Very Good.
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