It has happened many times before in the past and it will undoubtedly happen many times again in the future – an MLB team plans a huge promotional item giveaway around the July 31 trade deadline and the giveaway items are there but the player is not.

Such is the case for the Oakland Athletics, who have a Yoenis Cespedes ‘La Potencia’ T-shirt giveaway scheduled for this Saturday afternoon’s game against the Kansas City Royals. The only problem is, A’s general manager Billy Beane just traded Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for left-hander Jon Lester and outfielder/designated hitter Johnny Gomes. And while the merits and/or ramifications of the trade have yet to play out, the A’s, (or rather NetSuite.com, their banner sponsor) are footing the bill for T-shirts for a guy who is no longer with the team.

Entrepreneurs might be able to turn a quick buck if they can get a cheap ticket for Saturday’s As vs Royals game and then sell their giveaway T-shirt on eBay.
(Image courtesy of oakland.athletics.mlb.com)

Now granted, a T-shirt is a T-shirt and everybody loves T-shirts, but you have to believe that NetSuite, a cloud-based software company located in San Mateo, CA, can’t be all too pleased about the trade – not to mention the thousands of A’s fans who woke up to the news that their star outfielder and two-time defending Home Run Derby champion had been traded away.

The good news is that the 10,000 Cespedes T-shirts scheduled to be given away have instantly become collectors items and will undoubtedly hit eBay en masse later today, and they will probably command a pretty good price. In fact, as of this morning there were already several being pre-sold in the $50 range.

But alas, such is the cost of doing business in the Big Leagues, and in the big scheme of things, 10,000 T-shirts is a mere drop in the bucket in a multi-billion dollar industry.

Play Ball!