PHILADELPHIA — Plenty of people have strolled through one of the Foot Lockers at the various shopping malls dotting Phoenix and its environs, and many of those patrons have bought Diamondbacks shorts, because they support the team or just think the shorts look cool or both. But only one of those customers plays second base for the Diamondbacks.
“They’re good ones,” says Ketel Marte, who wore them at the ballpark and immediately started getting requests from his teammates. Finally, he went back to the mall and bought the whole rack.
Perhaps this does not seem notable: Professional athlete wears team gear. But most professional athletes do not pay $100 each for the privilege to wear team gear. (“Just 100,” says Marte, which serves as a reminder that last spring he signed a five-year, $76 million contract.) Some professional athletes—many of them in the Phillies’ clubhouse—buy city-themed merchandise, but righty Merrill Kelly, who spent five years in the minor leagues, a season playing winter ball in the Dominican Winter League and four years in South Korea before joining the Diamondbacks, says he has never heard of another player buying team-branded merchandise for himself.
