It’s tradition that when a team wins a championship, they’re given a big stonking ring with plenty of diamond chips to celebrate the fact. Usually these rings are so fat on the finger that you wouldn’t wear them outside of a 25-year alumni reunion, but they make for a nice keepsake in lieu of an actual trophy that you can take home.

So anyways, the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes had a great season in 2006, and thus they’re getting their rings, but there’s a twist in the tale…

Volcanoes ownership is SELLING the rings to anyone who wants one for $325 a pop. A presentation box will cost you another $45 on top of that.

What’s worse, if you buy one of the Salem-Keizer championship rings,
they’ll actually put your name on the side, as if you were playing left
field.

Now, maybe someone out there can tell me… is this not a little classless? I might be just uninformed, but this isn’t usually done, is it?

I used to work in the movie industry, and on each film you worked on, you’d normally get a jacket or t-shirt or cap or some such that had "[Name of Movie] Crew, Vancouver 2006" printed somewhere on it as a thank you for taking part.

But as cheap as those bits of swag were, you’d never consider for a moment the idea of selling them to people who WEREN’T working on crew. That sort of thing would just be tacky, right? It would devalue the very thing you’ve been thanked for if any old schmuck could go out and buy it for $12, and thereafter pretend that they worked on [Name of Movie].

If I were a member of the Volcanoes 2006 team, I’d feel a little put out that team ownership is making money off the back of something that I’ve trained fifteen years to win.

But hey, that’s just me.

Random YouTube clip of the day:
Game Six of the 1986 World Series, recreated using Nintendo’s RBI Baseball. Pure genius.