Chicago Cubs: Wrigley Field ivy on sale from 2016 World Series
The Chicago Cubs have devised another way to pry money from the wallets and PayPal accounts of fans: selling leaves of the ivy that hung from Wrigley Field’s walls during their historic World Series run in 2016.
In 2017, one shouldn’t need another reminder that the corporations behind billion-dollar businesses will go to absurd lengths to synergize backward overflow and cultivate new revenue streams. Here’s one anyway: ESPN’s Darren Rovell is reporting that the Chicago Cubs are selling ivy from the outfield walls at Wrigley Field. Ivy which ostensibly came from the ecosystem adorning Wrigley’s outfield walls in 2016, the year the Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years.
“The team emailed premier clients and season-ticket holders on Tuesday with an offer to purchase the ivy leaves that covered Wrigley Field’s outfield walls during the 2016 season. Although the foliage is typically discarded when the ivy turns red and sheds its leaves in November, the team, after the historic 2016 season, instead chose to collect the leaves for the first time and have each authenticated with a hologram.”
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That’s right, a hologram, because nothing brings back fond memories of breaking the shackles of more than a century of hardship than a sticker on dead foliage. Make no mistake, the Cubs here aren’t just ensuring fans are not sold a bill of goods, they’re looking out for the interests on the secondary market, telling baseball memorabilia fanatics that they will be able to certify the authenticity of the leaves when reselling them for a profit. Rovell continues:
“Each leaf costs $200 plus $15 shipping. The Cubs note that a fan can order up to 10 leaves and that the total leaves collected by the team number 2,016.”
The phrase caveat emptor translates to “let the buyer beware.” The Cubs aren’t lying about selling a leaf for $200. A consumer should be able to understand what it is they are actually receiving for their cash: a leaf. If the Cubs can convince a little more than 2,000 people to part with nearly half a million dollars for leaves, so be it. Nobody is really getting hurt, and there is no obvious effort to defraud—caveat emptor applies.
That said, there’s something almost untidy about such a transaction. The Cubs know it’s bunk. The consumer—should—know it’s bunk. Yet they both proceed anyway, with the Cubs making a respectable sum in the process.
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Come to think of it, there’s another Latin phrase that should apply, here: In pari delecto. In this exercise of absurdity, the Cubs and their willing fans are at equal fault.