The Indians’ rallying cry for the season started with a sign, a piece of poster board bearing a fun invitation some believed was real.
It morphed into a T-shirt, a gray, $8 Target purchase transformed with iron-on letters and stars from Hobby Lobby.
Nate Crowe, a 37-year-old Parma native and Streetsboro resident, invested $30 and had it delivered to Mike Napoli in the Progressive Field clubhouse. But since the Indians first baseman/designated hitter wore the shirt for a postgame interview after his walk-off sacrifice fly beat the Kansas City Royals on June 2, Crowe’s “Party at Napoli’s” slogan has raised more than $120,000 for Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital.
Sales of the official shirt have reached 13,000, with a playoff version in the works. Marc Terman, a vice president and national sales manager of 108 Stitches, estimates if the Indians get to the World Series, the postseason model could do 25,000 to 40,000, with proceeds still marked for the same charity.
That’s a lot of lives changed, along with a lot of toasts being hoisted to the Indians’ leading home run hitter.
In a Sept. 5 phone interview, Crowe called it “a lightning rod of a thing that happened off a T-shirt.”
The shirts and their 50 different knockoffs, which do not help the children’s hospital, have been spotted at a Durham Bulls game and outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. They’re being ordered at 108stitches.com by fans in Boston and Texas and perhaps Los Angeles, where Napoli previously played. When Napoli announced he would match part of the proceeds over a span of a few days — his gift reached about $36,000, Terman said — 108 Stitches sold 700 a night for three days and the website crashed at least three times.
Tribe second baseman Jason Kipnis sported one during an interview on MLB Network’s Intentional Talk in late June. On an August road trip to Texas, Tribe catcher Chris Gimenez said everyone in the Rangers’ clubhouse wanted one. When the Toronto Blue Jays came to Cleveland in August, Crowe was approached by a fan in a Russell Martin jersey who asked to swap.
“He said, ‘We heard about the story of what you’ve done and how you’re not taking anything. We wanted you to know we appreciated it,’ ” Crowe said of the man from Brampton, Ontario, attending a bachelor party with his dad.
Crowe, a married father of three who works in purchasing for a Fortune 500 company, is not getting anything but notoriety from his idea after donating $5,700 in royalties from 108 Stitches to the cause.
The Indians season ticket-holder, aka @hipstertito on Twitter, dreamed it up for a social media interaction event called Tribe Live at the game April 20. He was attending with friends whom he’d met through Twitter.
“I suggested Napoli, came up with a couple phrases. ‘What if there was some sort of after-party with Mike, insinuating that if they win the game that everybody’s going to his house?’ ” Crowe said. “We’ve all seen the pictures of Mike after the World Series parade in Boston. He had that reputation of being a fun-loving guy and it fits with how we are as good friends. It was pretty natural to say, ‘How about Party at Napoli’s?’ ”
Crowe held up the sign when Napoli came to bat, and a few fans took pictures.
“They would tag the Indians to it, and someone would say, ‘Is this true?’ ” Crowe said. “In jest, the Indians would say, ‘Unconfirmed.’ People around the ballpark started to share it. A little bit of a fire was lit and everyone just started flocking to it.”
Crowe had made T-shirts with funny slogans before. He came up with “Sweep the Leg Lonnie,” a play off the Karate Kid’s “Sweep the leg, Johnny,” and right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall wore it to a season ticket-holder autograph event. But when Crowe headed to Hobby Lobby for the Napoli lettering he would iron on in his kitchen, he wanted to keep the font simple. He had in mind sort of a drinking shirt, like John Belushi’s “College” sweatshirt from Animal House.
Crowe was at home, switching his television back and forth between the Indians and the Cavs’ Game 1 of the NBA Finals, when he got a text from the Indians that Andre Knott of SportsTime Ohio was about to interview Napoli and he had the shirt on.
When Crowe saw it, he ran upstairs to wake his wife, Laura, a banker, still streaming the broadcast on his phone.
“I said, ‘Look, look, he’s wearing the shirt!’ She gave me this long look and then went back to sleep,” Crowe said.
Laura Crowe might have been nonplussed, but that’s when the catchphrase really gained legs.
Napoli told Crowe through the Indians that he’d love to mass produce it, but wanted some of the proceeds to go to charity. He had worked with Boston Children’s Hospital while with the Red Sox. Last year in Texas, he sold a replica of the American flag shorts he wears to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Brady’s Bunch Lacrosse Program for pediatric cancer research and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“Any time I have the opportunity to try to make money for kids, it’s something I like to do,” Napoli said.
Napoli’s wish was fine with Crowe. His father has chronic myeloid leukemia. Two of Crowe’s three children were born premature. His 12-year-old son came three months early and the long hospitalization forced Crowe and his first wife to take out a second mortgage.
Northeast Ohio T-shirt makers were busy with Cavs’ NBA championship gear, so 108 Stitches, a St. Louis-based subsidiary of Logo Masters, jumped in. It had a contract with the MLB Players Association and had done K Cancer tees for the foundation of the Colorado Rockies’ Jason Motte.
“Marc said, ‘We’re going to sell thousands of these.’ I’ve been in sales before. I know when I hear, ‘We’re going to sell thousands of these,’ usually that’s 100,” Crowe said.
“I thought it would be some two-week phenomenon and two weeks later we’d be off to the next thing,” said Terman, a self-described “Cleveland sports diehard” who has lived here since 1986. “It’s made the summer a lot more fun. Every team needs a rally cry and I think this could be a good one for us for the rest of the year. If it gets us to a World Series title, that works for me.”
Indians players love the Party at Napoli’s shirts, with Gimenez marveling at how many he sees in the stands.
“People have embraced it and embraced him,” said Gimenez, who played with Napoli last year with the Rangers. “It was just something spontaneous and innocent and look what’s happened. Hopefully we can ride it for quite a while. I know the media would love to eat it up in the World Series.”
Crowe said several people have asked him what’s next.
“I said, ‘Let’s sit back and enjoy this. This has been awesome to be a part of, let’s sit back and watch it grow,’ ” Crowe said. “Everything gets old. Everything is a Macarena. Let’s get as much good as we can out of it.”
Napoli is blown away by how much good has come already, way more than he envisioned.
“It’s awesome. To make that much money and affect the lives at the Cleveland Clinic, it’s something that’s special,” Napoli said. “It kind of fits my personality, too. I think that’s why it meshed so well.
“Thank God for the sign.”
Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read her blog at www.ohio.com/marla. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.