Chicago Tribune Oct 4th 2007

 Combine popular players, big markets, a team on a hot streak and three long-suffering cities desperate for a World Series champion and what do you get?

If you're Major League Baseball, a problem. But at least it's a good one to have.

The traditionally moribund Phillies, the lovable loser Cubs and the sometimes hapless Indians are in the playoffs. So are the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels, while the Colorado Rockies are riding a furious late-season rally and flying high off a win in a wild-card tiebreaker.

And their merchandise is selling so fast that Major League Baseball is having a hard time keeping up.

"We never give out numbers, but suffice it to say it is at a record pace, for sure," Howard Smith, Major League Baseball's senior vice president of licensing, said Tuesday.

With a regular season that went down to the final weekend -- and beyond in the case of the Rockies, who needed a one-game playoff against San Diego to win the National League wild card -- the confluence of big markets, rabid fan bases and potential storybook endings is pushing sales.

The urge to buy was strong in the playoff cities Wednesday.

The Phillies store at Citizens Bank Park was doing brisk business in the hours before the Phillies-Rockies game with lots of fans picking up practically anything bearing the NL East champions logo.

Across the street from Coors Field in Denver, the store Sportsfan still hadn't received Rockies wild card T-shirts or hats. Assistant manager Clayton Reed said the phone has been ringing off the hook from people requesting the merchandise.

"We're not used to this stuff in September," he said.

The Rockies' only previous playoff appearance since they joined the NL in 1993 was in 1995, when they also were the wild card.

At Sports World, across the street from Wrigley Field, sales of Cubs memorabilia were brisk. Employees stuffed division championship T-shirts and hats into priority mail boxes to meet demand from online orders.

"Internet sales are through the roof," said Earl Shaevitz, one of the store owners. "We can't even keep up with it, selling all over the country and to Europe."

For franchises with traditionally strong sales like the Yankees and Red Sox, that isn't unusual, according to Mike May, the director of media relations for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. But it could get bigger if one of the Cinderella teams wins the Series.

"In these other markets -- Phillies, Cubs, Rockies -- whatever's not nailed down is going to go," he said.

In a year with relatively ho-hum playoffs, MLB might see the postseason produce about 5 percent of its merchandise sales, said Smith, the league official. This year, it could be as high as 20 percent.

While the league does not release sales figures, the manufacturers association reported total sales of MLB merchandise was $3.1 billion in 2005, the last year for which figures were available. That was up from $2.9 billion in 2004, when the Red Sox won the World Series and touched off a buying frenzy that lasted into May, Smith said.

"When people get caught up in the excitement of a winning team, especially in the case of the Red Sox and White Sox [the 2005 World Series champs] who had not tasted victory in decades, people feel, 'If I don't buy now, I'll never get a chance to buy them as a winner, because it may be just as long before they win it again.'"