When Anniversaries Go Wrong: 1969 NY Mets
This year marks the 40th Anniversary of the Miracle Mets championship of 1969. To commemorate the franchise’s first World Series win, the Mets are giving away 25,000 t-shirts at the August 22nd game versus the Philadelphia Phillies. Which sounds great.
But these t-shirts look like this.
I swear to Jehovah, this is not a joke. I got this photo directly from the team website. Men, women, and children will receive t-shirts numbered 69. Not only that, there will no doubt be thousands of Phillies fans in attendance who will also be getting this t-shirt, which they will be bringing back to Philadelphia. Imagine the fun they’re gonna have at the expense of Mets fans for the rest of their lives.
So to the Mets’ Marketing Department – what the hell?
August 4th, 2009 at 1:08 am
what’s wrong with that?
those were the best days of my life!
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August 4th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Is that really so bad? It’s pretty simple and clean looking. So many other things you can rip the Mets about that now you have to find everything wrong.
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August 4th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Maybe the Mets know that their target demo is a 15-year old boy. Or at least, grown men with the sense of humor of a 15-year old boy?
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August 4th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Wow.. it says 69…. Did Beavis or Butthead write this story? It’s a tribute to the 69 team… my god you are a clown
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August 4th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Mets are a joke.
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August 4th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Who’s the sleazy douchebag again, Paul?
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August 5th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Omar, I’m still waiting for you to drop your mad baseball knowledge on the dumb broads who write/read this site. Go for it, big guy!
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August 5th, 2009 at 9:51 am
We are already having fun at the Mets expense.
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August 5th, 2009 at 9:58 am
We obviously understand that the “69″ is a reference to the 1969 team. But I don’t think that the average baseball fan even knows that that’s the year the Mets won. Therefore, they’re just going to assume that you’re the kind of person who had this custom made because “69″ is the upper limit of your imagination and humor.
There were many other ways that the marketing department could have gone with this. They didn’t have to make it into a replica jersey style. It could have been avoided.
All I know is, I will never wear this t-shirt.
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August 5th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Wait, how can Phillies fans use this to have fun “at the expense of Mets fans for the rest of their lives” ? If one reads the number for its sexual connotation, it implies that the wearer is a mutual oral sex enthusiast. What’s wrong with that, exactly?
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August 5th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Ace:
Nothing wrong with it — until some Phillies fan takes the shirt to his local sporting goods shop and gets “PIAZZA” ironed on where the nameplate would go if it were a real jersey.
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August 5th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
acmesalesrep:
I still fail to see where this would be a source of embarrassment. The Phillie fan in your scenario would be implying Piazza enjoys the sex position connoted by the number. I don’t see how that’s anything near embarrassing.
Is there a social stigma attached to 69-ing that I’m missing?
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August 6th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
ace – the social stigma against homosexuality and the rumors regarding mike piazza’s sexual preference would be a good place to start.
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August 8th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Chris Lucas:
But the connotations of the number 69 are ungendered and imply no particular sexual preference. The issues surrounding Piazza’s sexuality (and the stigmas attached to that) are a separate issue. Do questions about Mike Piazza’s sexuality paint everything identified with the Mets? If the point I’m missing is that a homophobic Phillies fan might alter, at his own expense, a t-shirt advertising a rival team that he received for purchasing a ticket to the rival team’s stadium so as to suggest that Mike Piazza enjoys 69ing (and, because of context taken from back in the first Bush term, suggests that he enjoys 69-ing men), then I’m afraid I don’t think that this is a major problem. If the hypothetical Phillies fan would have to alter the shirt, then the hypothetical “blame” for the insignificant “situation” would not lie with the organizations that distributed and designed the shirts, but rather with the hypothetical person that re-designed it.
I mean, nothing’s stopping a Phillie’s fan from ordering a Piazza Mets jersey now and changing the numbers to 69 (or something more direct, like a picture of men having sex).
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August 10th, 2009 at 2:22 am
I’m stoned and this is a confusing conversation. I rather be f*****g.
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August 10th, 2009 at 2:23 am
woops… stone
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August 21st, 2009 at 10:28 am
I’m a lifelong Mets fan, and the only thing that embarasses me about this shirt is the giant CITI logo on the sleeve.
If you think this is embarassing because of the “69,” you must be 14 years old.
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