Cal's Fame
It wasn’t a surprise that Cal Ripken made the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot Monday. A variety of products are already available to celebrate his induction, along with Tony Gwynn’s, scheduled in July. The MLB Shop is selling 2007 Hall of Fame T-shirts to honor Ripken, who played a total of 21 seasons, all with the Baltimore Orioles, including 16 years in which he played every day.
Ripken’s own Ironclad Authentics, a division of Ripken Baseball that specializes in hand-signed collectibles and licensed merchandise, is offering both Ripken and Gwynn gear at www.ironcladathletics.com.
Ripken ranks in the top 10 in the trust and appeal categories among 340 celebrity-athletes, in Davie Brown’s talent index, which uses consumer research to measure celebrities’ awareness and other attributes such as appeal and trust, to help brands and companies make decisions about potential endorsers. Of the index’s 1,400 members, Ripken ranks 489th; Gwynn comes in at 1,005.
XM Satellite Radio, which in 2004 signed an 11-year deal to broadcast every Major League Baseball game, marked a first with Ripken’s induction by taping the call he got from the Baseball Writers Association of America informing him of the vote, and then subsequently broadcasting it.
CRAIG DAVIS In more than 33 years at the Sun Sentinel, Craig Davis has written about a wide variety of sports topics from baseball to yachting, fishing to triathlons, and also worked as a copy editor and page designer. Recently he reported on local sports, including running, swimming, cycling, equestrian and beach volleyball. He enjoys sports as a participant as well as a spectator, is active in the South Florida running scene plays in the curling club at Saveology Iceplex. This blog offers a glimpse at the business side of sports in the interest of enhancing enjoyment of the games and sporting options as a spectator as well as a participant.
