In late February of 2012, Buster Olney wrote about a certain Tigers’ batting practice session in his blog. I thought that Miguel Cabrera’s quote (in all its simplicity) “Si or No? Si Mother#$@#%$!” would make a great t-shirt, although I’d never done anything like that before and knew it’d never go anywhere.

Then, later that morning I read Craig Calcaterra’s post on Cabrera’s quote and how he called for a Tigers blogger to actually buckle down and make a t-shirt, or the internet would have failed. I laughed to myself. It would be totally neat to actually do one, but with my schedule and the reality of pulling it off based on my dedication to seeing it through, I doubted I would actually do it.

However, I talked to a few Tiger’s fans that I’m close with and all of them told me to do it. So, later that day I contacted a local t-shirt company who gave me price quotes. I was still unsure because I didn’t really want to make a monetary commitment for something I had no idea would work.

I figured I would ask who would be interested in a shirt in a post and see what kind of response I could get out of it. If I got at least, say 50 comments or so on it then I’d consider investing.

Well, that post turned out to be a great idea because it put me in touch with Doug Zuba of Alternative Hero and, long story short, a week later we launched the shirt.

At that point I figured I’d at least let Buster Olney and Craig Calcaterra know what their words had produced, so I tweeted both of them the link to the site and the design for the shirt.

Well, then this happened:

When I heard Miguel Cabrera say this last week, I thought it’d make a great T-shirt. And now it’s happened. walkoffwoodward.com/?p=1131

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 28, 2012

and he responded to my original tweet:

@WalkoffWoodward Hey, tweeted about the T-shirt; sorry about the site traffic.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 28, 2012

He wasn’t kidding

Then, Calcaterra took to his platform with this post later that morning.

That afternoon the T-shirt got a spot on the local radio station, 1130 WFAN in Detroit.

And Crain’s Business Detroit profiled the shirt and Doug in a clever post.

The whole reception isn’t exactly earth-shattering, but the idea caught, the internet didn’t fail thanks to my heroics and in the end the t-shirts were ordered rather enthusiastically.

So, I just wanted to let you guys know, you know, the people who read this blog for some reason. Thanks for making Spring Training an exciting time to blog, and go buy a t-shirt.