Among the wreckage that John Fisher leaves behind in his Vegas heist of the Oakland Athletics is an American institution at live sporting events. Just as the A’s players, staff and fans arrived at the Coliseum for the team’s last game in Oakland, the bootleg shirt vendors were right there alongside them.
They peddle merchandise with copyrighted logos alongside beloved, and trademarked, characters and images that without a doubt have not received proper approval. The graphics are sometimes off-center, off-color, or just plain awful, and yet many that show up to A’s home games stop to peruse the collections that have become mainstays of the BART bridge that leads to the stadium, or the parking lots alongside the tailgates.