Two of my favorite things are the Mets and meat. So back around 2009-ish, I combined those two passions by creating a Meats T-shirt featuring a Mets-style script, which I sold in a few butcher shops and barbecue joints around New York. The Meats shirt soon led to a Knicks-based Knish shirt (which I was hoping to sell in a Jewish deli, but I was never able to make that happen).
Later, during the pandemic in 2020, I collaborated with designer Bryan Molloy to create a bunch of additional shirts that combined food and sports logos. The idea was to match the food with the city, like in the Reds-based “Chili” shirt shown above, which I think is the best one we ever did. I don’t recall if we formally referred to the project as “Meaty Tees,” but that’s what I always called it in my head. Here are some additional designs we came up with (click on the thumbnails to see larger versions):
Bryan and I sold these on the down-low in order to avoid any potential issues with the various teams and leagues. It was a fun creative project (especially during the pandemic, when I was stuck at home and needed things to keep me occupied), and the cloak-and-dagger aspect was oddly enjoyable as well.
But someone must have ratted us out, because in late 2020 I received a call from two guys who identified themselves as attorneys for Major League Baseball. They were very nice, very friendly. One of them said, “These shirts you’ve come up with are really fun, really smart. I like them; hell, I’d even wear them. You need to stop making them right now.”
So that was the end of that. But it was fun while it lasted, and I got a lot of great comments while wearing my old Knish shirt during the Knicks’ recent NBA title run.