Carrying a Franchise

He has done everything. The franchise has done the rest.

Mike Trout arrived in Anaheim and immediately became the best baseball player alive, which is a thing that happened and continued to happen for over a decade while the organization around him did what organizations do when they have the best player alive and are not entirely sure what to do with that information. He won MVP awards. He posted numbers that require historical context to properly evaluate. He was, by any reasonable analytical framework anyone has ever developed to assess the quality of a baseball player, the best baseball player. And the Angels finished under .500. And the Angels missed the playoffs. And Trout showed up the following spring and was the best baseball player again, quietly, professionally, with a dedication to his craft that bordered on the meditative, while the team around him had conversations in conference rooms about things that were not Mike Trout but perhaps should have been Mike Trout, and the result of those conversations was another season of Mike Trout carrying the franchise, and the franchise arriving at its destination, and the destination not being October.

The Trout Carrying a Franchise tee is for Angels fans who have watched all of this happen from their seats at the ballpark, which they continued to attend, because Mike Trout was there, and Mike Trout is worth attending for. District DM130 Perfect Tri® Tee — featherlight, broken-in soft, and available in Black Frost, Red Frost, and White. Wear it in honor of the carrying. Wear it in honor of the franchise being carried. Wear it because Mike Trout gave you something genuinely beautiful to watch for a very long time and the least you can do is wear a shirt about it.

• 4.5 oz. — light enough for a fan whose emotional load this season is already heavier than anything the Angels front office has carried in recent memory
• 50% polyester / 25% combed ring-spun cotton / 25% rayon — tri-blend construction that holds together with more structural integrity than the Angels pitching rotation in any given August
• Rib-knit neck that maintains its shape, the same way Trout maintained his professionalism through seasons that would have caused lesser men to say something pointed in a press conference
• Tear-away label — nothing irritating at the collar, which puts it ahead of several Angels offseason moves that shall remain nameless out of respect for everyone involved
• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping for a structured fit appropriate for someone who has witnessed greatness delivered without adequate organizational support
• Available in Black Frost, Red Frost, and White — Angels red for a player who deserved more and gave everything anyway

Size Chart