Sundae Helmets and Civil Suits

Right before my camera broke (followed immediately by my laptop), I took a bunch of pictures of baseball stuff I've been collecting over the years and was going to write some posts on it. I've been saving it all for a sports bar I want to open up someday (hopefully sooner rather than later) in Cincinnati (and then a branch in Dayton). The sports bar is not going to be your typical sports bar but a museum of sorts with at least one beer from each Major League city and as many Cincy beers as I can get. Christian Moerlein brews will be plentiful! I have the whole thing planned out hoping that one day I can get the capital to open it. I don't want to say any more for fear of someone stealing my ideas, but I'll just reiterate that it isn't your typical sports bar.

The stuff I picked up as a kid was mostly junk. How many of us can remember after a game going around Riverfront Stadium picking up the souvenir cups people left behind? I had so many cups but sadly don't have the ones from the eighties anymore. We'd go up and down the steep cement stairs and pick up those plastic cups with the sticky residue of Coca Cola stubborning clinging to the sides. Sometimes, we'd find a curiously full cup. Today when I see those full cups I think to myself - why did that person just waste a hundred million dollars or whatever the price is for a soda these days? (Tip - most parks will give a free soda to designated drivers. I don't know if you get the souvenir cup, though.)

We did the same thing with the sundae helmets, picking up chocolate covered, milky soup and standing in the bathroom line to wash them out. (Riverfront did not have the best facilities to handle the growing number of women who were attending ballgames, and the lines were always pretty long, at least they were in my memory.) One of the best parts about going to the ballpark as a kid were the sundae helmets. Riverfront used to have all of the National League helmets, so for a couple of years I tried to get at least one of every team. I succeeded until expansion birthed the Rockies and the Marlins, but by then I was in high school and felt I was too old for sundae helmets. It was all about the Lemon Chills then. I don't quite remember when other teams stopped being available, but in this day and age when it's difficult to win a kid's loyalty, I'm glad only Reds helmets are stuffed with ice cream and glopped with chocolate sauce.

I still have many, many souvenir cups, not only from Riverfront and GABP but also from other parks around the country, and I have dozens of sundae helmets of every team except the Devil Rays, Nationals (they didn't sell sundae helmets at RFK), and Marlins. But much of the stuff I've acquired in recent years is more sophisticated - nicely framed photos, posters, and artwork, limited edition statues, and a nice collection of hats and baseballs procured from the fourteen thirteen MLB parks (and the three four dead ones) I have traveled to since I've been older. (Guess RFK goes in the dead pile and I have a new park in DC to see!)

In no other sport is memorabilia as much a part of it as the players themselves. Have you ever touched a bat of Babe Ruth? There's a sort of magic to it - it feels more a part of a fairytale than a piece of tree. What about gripping a baseball with the autograph of Barry Larkin or Eric Davis or any of your childhood heroes? There's a certain energy there, a quaint nostalgic spark that lights up a smile and a warm recollection. And remember when your mom or dad bought you that mini wooden bat despite their fears you'd bash your brothers or sisters with it? Remember the excitement you had when you held that bat as you left the souvenir stand, a bat that was now your very own? Do you still have it now? I do. And when I see it, I recall how I felt when my mom acquiesced to my desire for that tiny piece of lumber.

In the last few years, I've also acquired some pieces for my collection that I am most proud of - my own photos. I've created something to display that no one else in the world has. I want to change that, though. I'd like to sell the photos, framed and signed in limited numbers. I wonder, could I do it?

There are so many questions about it, the most important being copyright laws. These days, corporations will sue an individual for anything, so you practically have to hire a lawyer just to breathe. I know you have to get permission to sell photos of players, so those photos are out of the question. (In fact, I think it's illegal to even post them on our blogs.) And I know anything that has a logo is illegal to sell. What I'm not sure about is photos like this one, where Cincinnati Reds is clearly visible on top of the dugout. I've printed and framed it and it looks pretty cool, something that I think others might find interesting if they saw it hanging at a show or something. But can I legally sell it?

Then there's the question of Great American Ballpark itself. The stadium is public domain, so that's no problem, but what about the Great American logo visible on the outside of the stadium?

Used to be that artists - and photographers have been accepted as artists in recent years - were allowed free reign over their subjects. Corporations have destroyed that. They rule our lives and tell us what we are allowed to do in a language only lawyers and patient people can decipher. All I want to do is make a little pocket money so I can go to more baseball games and perhaps pick up a few more pieces to display in my future sports bar, a dream I've had since I was about eight years old.

Ahh, those days of picking up souvenir cups and sundae helmets were so much simpler, weren't they?