How to Keep the T-Shirt Cannon Alive

The world is on the verge of losing one of the most important inventions of all time: the T-shirt cannon. Thanks to pro sports (and now college sports, too) being played in empty stadiums, marketing departments no longer have use for the intrepid cannons that provided so much entertainment – and free T-shirts – over the years.

MLB writer Michael Clair recently reported on how one Korean baseball team made use of its defunct T-shirt cannon. According to him, we could potentially use T-shirt cannons to celebrate a whole range of special events that have nothing to do with sports.

An Epic Home Run Celebration

Clair’s idea is admittedly borrowed from Kiwoom Heroes slugger and epic bat flipper Byung-woo Jeon. It turns out that Jeon is well known throughout the KBO for his unique home run celebrations. One of his more recent celebrations involved a T-shirt cannon.

Video shows Jeon going yard with a pretty impressive swing. He rounds the bases and heads for the dugout. Upon arriving, a member of the coaching staff is standing ready with a T-shirt cannon. Jeon takes the cannon, goes down on one knee, and fires a T-shirt into a crowd of his fellow players. The dugout then erupts in cheers and high-fives.

Hey, whatever works. You really can’t fire T-shirts into empty stands and expect to get any value from it. So if you have no fans to get riled up, why not rile up your teammates? It makes sense.

The Perfect Social Distancing Tool

Let’s assume for the sake of this discussion that pro sports never brings fans back. What happens to all those T-shirt cannons? It would be a shame to throw them in the dumpster because they make the perfect social distancing tool for all kinds of celebrations.

Picture a birthday party for your 12-year-old. The whole family will be there along with a small group of friends, all of whom have to keep their distance. Where is the fun in that? It can be a lot of fun if you have a T-shirt cannon.

Head on over to the Five Dollar T-Shirts website and pick up a few inexpensive tees appropriate to 12-year-olds. Then at some point during the party, send your 12-year-old and all of his friends out into the yard. Make sure they scatter so that they are no closer than 6 feet. Then fire T-shirts at them.

You get to offer them a great party favor without requiring them to stand close together. Not only that, it is guaranteed that every one of those kids will talk about your epic party for weeks.

Clair says that the T-shirt cannon will work out just fine for weddings, birth announcements, and even casual lights at home with your favorite loved one. He may be right. A T-shirt cannon could be a perfect antidote for all the misery thrust upon us by the coronavirus crisis.

Let’s Hope for Better

Having your very own T-shirt cannon for celebrating life’s most important moments would be interesting. But in all seriousness, let’s hope things don’t come to that. Let us hope that eventually the world finds a way to conquer coronavirus so that life can get back to normal. We really need to go see our favorite sports teams again.

The T-shirt cannon in a live stadium encapsulates what so many people appreciate about pro and college sports. People appreciate the entertainment value and the escape opportunity sporting events offer. How ironic that at a time when a lot of us need a few hours of escape, our favorite sports are not available.

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