It’s Gio Day, baby!

Ali White and Adrian Serrano combine forces to create a keeper T-shirt honoring Lucas Giolito

Long ago (or, last year?) Ali White created this little Lucas Giolito graphic to celebrate the days he starts for the White Sox. With a little help from our tee design guy Adrian Serrano, it’s now our newest piece of merch:

This Giolito design, as well as a couple of additional new ones you can scroll to directly below, are on sale now and available in all the usual wearable and non-wearable styles. Please, take a look!

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Ever wonder about the White Sox and their obsession with the longest-tenured White Sox player, Leury García? Well, we’ve got a t-shirt (and hoodie, and other products), for that:

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OK, the White Sox no longer have a Top 5 payroll in baseball. We’re still in the Lucky 7!

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Hey, this weekend a former White Sox folk hero decided to get a little spicy with White Sox Twitter. It had something to do with the 108 tournament, maybe? It’s a funny poem, and it’s hard to ever reject a design that includes the concept of sassy. Thus, here we go, it’s Palk Smash Block.

And hey, you might have heard, the White Sox are spending this season (oh, trust me, in the intervening years, you’re gonna hear about it from the front office, Sox fans). Spending wisely ... well ...

While the White Sox remain in the Top Five spenders for the season (they have now fallen to fifth, ahead of all teams but the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees and Padres), celebrate the achievement!

Both designs are on sale now and available in all the usual wearable and non-wearable styles. Please, take a look!

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You can read more about the Players League below, in the copy for our original PL logo design. However, one of us, not gonna say who, let his frustration spill over, and a few fellow SBN writers thought it might make a nifty T-shirt.

What say you?

Oh, you say this feels more like a sticker for your Trapper Keeper or car bumper? Dig it:

Seriously, Players League gear is all the rage, and it is available only at our store, so check it out!

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The Players League existed for just one season, in 1890, but was developed in times like these.

Actually, in one aspect, baseball in the late 19th Century was healthier for fans — the antitrust exemption MLB now enjoys did not exist. The Players League was launched to compete with the National League and, to a lesser extent, the American Association (AA), then a major league.

Battles between players and management had existed formally at least back to 1879, when the National League owners silently adopted the Reserve Clause, which evolved quickly into a way for teams to claim ownership of a player for the life of his career.

A decade after its invention, the Reserve Clause had grown from a novelty “keeper league” concept to a way for NL teams to claim every player in the league as lifetime property. On top of that, both the NL and the AA had established an individual salary cap, preventing any player from earning more than the equivalent of $50,000 today.

Out of this onerous climate, the Players League was born. Eight teams (Chicago Pirates, Boston Reds, Brooklyn Wonders, New York Giants, Philadelphia Athletics, Pittsburgh Burghers, Cleveland Infants, Buffalo Bisons) debuted, packed with NL and AA talent. The on-field product was both top-quality and profitable.

Merger talks, which were constant and ongoing in the wildcat baseball days of the 1800s, began almost before Opening Day, but outmaneuvering by the NL and sheer bad luck saw the Players League fall to pieces after just one season. Six of its eight teams either merged with existing NL or AA city counterparts or outright joined the majors outside of the Players League.

Throughout CBA talks, dating to before the initial impasse last December, I’ve been dropping the #PlayersLeague tag in discussions of MLB’s monopoly and/or obfuscation. With a needless lockout and truly bad-faith bargaining in the duration, maybe this hashtag should grow wings.

Thus, we present a 2020s take on a 1890s brainstorm:

Adrian has modernized the original Players League logo, combining a modern batter with some classic flourishes.

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Our Players League gear is available at our store, so check it out!