Major League Baseball is asking retailers to return 2016 Cleveland Indians Championship gear so that they could destroy it. According to ESPN and The Huffington Post, MLB is no longer donating their gear to countries in need because they need to, “protect the team from inaccurate merchandise being available in the general marketplace.”
MLB makes sets of championship gear for both teams so that it’s made available to fans as soon as the series victory is finalized. The MLB up until this point has been donating to World Vision since 2005.
It just seems wasteful for MLB to destroy clothes that could change a person’s way of life all because of branding issues. Just think about the amount of profit MLB must be making off both World Series gear if they are in a position to take the risk in this faulty investment. The reasoning sounds extremely selfish since baseball is producing this gear knowing the risk involved. The Chicago Cubs alone sold five-times more merchandise than the average club this year. If the league can afford to overproduce their merchandise, teams should eat the risks involved with doing so.
Just think about the potential receiving a MLB championship sweater may have on a child who is living in a country in need. It may inspire them to work towards becoming a potential player themselves. That merchandise is a sense of optimism for those that live in a hopeless society.
Major League Baseball is extremely generous as is. In fact, they inspire their players to give back to local and foreign communities. Why let a life changing product become waste when organizations like World Vision have a productive use for it? It is safe to reserve hope that MLB will eventually reinstate their foreign merchandising donations if fans just request for them to do so.