Didn’t take too long to find the right source photo to use, but I was stuck on the caption. I’ve heard that many cancer survivors (and family of those who didn’t make it) that the fight/battle language often used with cancer support slogans carries with it a lot of uncomfortable baggage. And while the fans in Seattle drew up a sign with the best and most eloquent remark possible, I’d be hard pressed to get it through security.

Exactly

And then it was a week later and a couple yambags set off bombs at the best day of the year in Boston and Matt Reis was there helping to save people’s lives and really everything went bananas for about five days. So now besides “your starting fullback has cancer” we got “your hometown got blowed up, including your goalie’s family.” Now what?

I was browsing The Atlantic’s gallery of photo tributes when I found it. It’s a squashed Gatorade cup at the finish line. Any other year, it’s litter. This year, it’s a message. Endurance. Whatever happens, we’ll push through it.

ENDURANCE

Brought it out for the game vs. Philly–a game for which Alston was the image on the season ticket–and the stadium chanted Alston’s name at minute 30 in tribute.

(You can see that next to the banner there’s also the tribute I did for Matt Reis and his family, namely just bringing back the old Matt Reis has a Posse banner for the night with intent to give it to him afterwards).

Gave it to Kevin postgame, gave Matt his old time banner postgame, and felt great to do so after a multi-goal, clean sheet win. Nothing like handing over banners to two dudes who’ve got the endurance to work on through the whole season.

No, the French flag goes the other way. No, there’s no Dempsey; I love him, but he wasn’t the face of the team like these guys.

No, wait, the coolest part is YOU CAN BUY THIS! In print, iPhone case, or canvas format.

And there’ll be more where that came from in the coming weeks–look for some old banner favorites as well as some pieces that wouldn’t work as banners. We’re gonna build something this summer.

she flies, 64″ x 52″

Now, the cool part: THIS MUG’S BEEN SOLD
Here’s some detail shots. Please note that this is handmade, and, as such, is subject to variation in paint and whatnot, which is to say pay no attention to the parts where I dropped paint.

Like all my banners, this is on heavyweight cotton (in this case, twill), painted with fabric paint, and fixed with nylon straps + brass snaps to hang in your home or at a game. I’ll be selling more banners shortly, as I gotta get to Brazil somehow, and scratch tickets just aren’t a solid investment strategy.

Sold this sucker within 24 hours. Keep checking back for more.

Our pals Doug and Tanya from Des Moines were in town the weekend before, and I asked Tanya if she’d take some banners with her to serve in my stead. I’ve done this before, loaning banners to friends traveling to games I can’t attend. Everything’s always come back safe and sound. “I don’t know,” Tanya said, “at Livestrong Sporting Park they do hang banners out of the way of the crowd.”

“It’ll be fine,” I reassured her, and sent her off with the Boxing Dolo banner and a brand new Herculez Gomez one I’d made specifically to sell.

Famous last words, huh?

I watched the game from home and saw the banners hanging from the upper deck, alongside the AO Des Moines one that’s made it mostly around the world by now. Afterwards, I get a text from Tanya: The banners are missing. I text back that they’ve probably just been misplaced, perhaps picked up by another American Outlaws chapter by accident. They’ll turn up.

The next day, they don’t turn up. I put out the word on Twitter, telling Herc his banner is missing, letting the various AO groups know two banners didn’t make it home. Like I said, the Herc banner was meant for sale, and, while I could repaint them both, that’s still a couple days worth of work missing. My pal Julie spreads the word to AO HQ, figuring the more people we have after them, the better chances we have of getting the banners back. Word gets out, tweets get retweeted, it’s like the Gardner Heist, only for soccer banners, and also kind of stupid.

While in transit to my cousin’s wedding, I get an email from Troy Diggs of the Fox affiliate in KC. He’s a soccer fan and wants to help the banner search by getting a piece together for the next morning’s broadcast. I tell him the story, and the next morning I wake up in an unimpressive Pittsburgh hotel to watch a clip of a morning news show in a city I’ve never been to talking about things I made that got stolen from a game I wasn’t actually at.

My life’s kind of weird.

The security staff at LSP promised to review the camera footage from that night; it’s not quite the zoom-enhance-look at this dude’s pores level you get on tv, but high enough resolution they can get at least some physical description. Julie got a photo of what appeared to be two people stuffing the banners under their shirts. It wasn’t looking like we’d get them back.

A week later, Julie gets an email from Chris Wyche at the Sporting KC offices. “We’re halfway there,” he said. They’d identified the suspects via security camera footage, then tracked down their information via Ticketmaster. One banner had been returned, and the other was still in progress.

Ten days later, there’s a package on my doorstep, return address of Livestrong Sporting Park.

The Herc banner is damaged slightly–one corner got ripped out. It’ll be re-hemmed, and will be placed for sale as planned. The Dolo banner is just as it was, and will also be for sale.

But they’re back, and that’s what matters. Even if they hadn’t come back, I was blown away by how eager everyone was to help, how quickly everyone got connected. It’s a pretty great community we’ve got here in American soccer. So to Doug and Tanya, to Julie, to Troy, to Chris, to the LSP and KC staff, to all the AO national and AO KC crew who, as advertised, did not stop:

Lee Nguyen, after he scored against Vancouver. I wanted one where his hair is all flying around and he looks like an angry betta. Love this dude, but I really miss doing more Revs pumpkins–hey Jay, see about extending our season how ’bout.

Alexi Lalas, from Back In The Day. Someone tweeted an open dare to carve him back in his ginger glory days, so I had to oblige. He liked it.

For a limited time, the above shirt (also available in a dark grey women’s cut) can be yours, with proceeds going to ThinkTaylor. Unlike Taylor’s normal shirts, this one is available in more sizes than just “tiny.” Hop to it!

Except, of course, stupid banners appropriating pop culture themes are for me, and, well…Alex Morgan’s nickname is “Baby Horse.” Then there’s Brek Shea, with his famous hurrdoo and this weird photoshoot he did with a toy donkey. At least I hope that’s not a real donkey; it’s hard to tell what in this photo is real. And then US Soccer finally got it together that the men’s and women’s teams should wear the same jersey (give or take a couple of stars).

All of this–plus the promise of a WCQ cycle starting with an easy driving distance friendly in Toronto–added up to one thing: The silliest banner idea I’ve done yet. I thought about having a contest to see what would pay more: people who would pay me to do it, or people who would pay me NOT to do it. (I may actually sell this after it’s been to a couple more games.) The more I thought about it, the more I just had to run with this for shits and giggles.

I’m goin’ straight to hell, just like my mama said

Finished size is about 5′ high by 10′ wide, and it was a real bear to do in the available space in my house. Lots of metallic colors used, especially in Morgan’s hair and Shea’s hooves. There’s even a little gold highlighting in the road to the World Cup. Shea is in red, with the Nike snakeball on his flank; Morgan is in white, with the USSF crest (plus two stars for two Women’s World Cup titles, of course) on her flank and a pink headband just like real life. (I saw some people inferring the red pony must be Canada, which, no, of course not! The teamwork here is the men’s and women’s US teams, not two opponents).

At the stadium, the banner got a lot of laughs; postgame, I saw a few complaints about how ponies have no place in football or whatever, based on the occasionally creepy aspects of grown-up pony viewers. That’s your hangup, not mine, as the banner’s not meant to be anything besides a fun pop culture riff. I got a compliment on it from an actual (retired) player who has an actual five year old daughter, and that’s good enough for me. The right people always get it.

I went through some old photos, and picked out one from South Africa. Post US-Algeria, I got a shot of this guy sounding the vuvuzela of victory:

If you’re familiar with the Mormon faith, you may know that atop many of their temples is a statue of an angel named Moroni blowing a trumpet. I’m not LDS, but the photo reminded me of that, and the concept of Mormonism as a wholly American homegrown religion made a neat parallel, I thought, to homegrown American soccer fandom.

The finished project looks a little like a clown, with the facepaint and makarapa, but you get the idea. Spilled paint on the arm that had to be gone over with white, which I usually dislike doing. Went with me to US-Canada in Toronto, where, sadly, belief was not enough to get us past a 0-0 draw.

Would I! Hardest part of this was keeping it under wraps for a month, though I did broadly hint that there was a side project associated with the Lee Nguyen banner that’d come soon. This is it. Big thanks to Jason Saghini, Scott Riddell, and the gang at the mothership for making it happen.