Oh… OH!
Now I understand why some fans don’t like seeing phantom champs merchandise.
Up until, oh, 17 hours ago I had never seen a current season phantom championship shirt, cap, bottle opener, whatever for one of my teams.
Yeah, it kinda stings a little.
Anyways, the Toronto Blue Jays came up one comeback short in their run through the 2015 MLB Playoffs, their first trip to the postseason in 22 years. They ended up two wins away from an American League pennant and a trip to the World Series against the (favourite ballclub of so many of my friends) New York Mets. Too bad, that would have been pretty epic…
Had the Blue Jays come back to beat the Royals in the ALCS we would have seen these items flooding the streets of Toronto for years and years, as always these are the actual graphics which would have been used to advertise these things on Internet sports shops.
We’ll start with what the team would have been wearing on the field and in the locker room during their champagne spray-off:
Those who follow me on Twitter may notice the t-shirt above differs from what we posted last night, the graphics simply changed in the past 24 hours. No word as to why, the secondary colour was powder blue and then they changed it to red. We’re going ahead with the assumption that the graphic you see above is what the team would have actually worn.
Moving on to the World Series the Blue Jays would have worn this special cap during their games with the World Series patch on the side:
And this jersey, although I imagine they would have just worn the blue one every single game:
The items you see below were going to be fan-exclusive caps, t-shirts, hoodies, etc. Not intended for on-field use:
Merchandise is also produced for certain World Series matchups, as you’d guess this year we saw items for a Blue Jays-Cubs, Blue Jays-Mets, Cubs-Royals, and the eventual Royals-Mets pairings. This merchandise is known as “Duelling”, the not-gonna-happen variety we call “phantom duelling”. We’ve assembled two phantom duelling collections here, the Blue Jays/Mets, and the Cubs/Royals:
Check back after the World Series where we’ll probably get to see another collection of phantom KC Royals World Series champs gear… back to back phantom champs! Woo! Or maybe the Mets, who knows.
Related stories:
Cleveland Indians 2016 Phantom World Series Champs 
Toronto Blue Jays 2016 AL “Phantom” Champions Merchandise 
Not Amazin Enough: NY Mets 2015 World Series Phantom Champs Merch 
Phantom 2015 World Series Merchandise for the Fallen LDS Teams 
KC Royals 2014 World Series Phantom Champs Merchandise 
What If… New York Yankees 2012 AL Champs Gear 
2011 Detroit Tigers AL Champs Phantom Merchandise Braves, Red Sox Wild Card T-Shirts