Inspired by today’s news that crypto.com was taking over Staples, we thought we’d go back and rank all the great sponsors the SweatSox have had over the years.
17. Wendy’s (2019)
Back in 2019, Chris Lidstone was the SweatSox point man during our 1-year sponsorship with Wendy’s, specifically to promote their Junior Bacon Cheeseburger. For every 10 times Lidstone said “JBC”, on either side of the border, we’d get a free burger. We got lots of burgers that year. JBC!
16. Dominos Pizza (2016)
In 2016, Domino’s Pizza started a “bring a pizza manager to your baseball game” sponsorship program, that the SweatSox took full advantage of. In exchange for letting one of their store managers play on our team, we’d get all the leftover cold pizza “that had been sitting in their trunk all game” we could eat. We got Jason Klein, and we got free pizza, double win.
15. Cory Bond & Kent Johnston (2009)
The moment the 2008 season ended, then manager Craig Cornell gracefully threw away any and all control he had over the team, just like he would his bat whenever he thinks it was ball 4, but in reality it was strike 3. Cory Bond and Kent Johnston stepped in as Authority and Director, giving the team no extra money, just their time in exchange for a little name recognition. The 2009 season was the CK SweatSox season.
14. The Hub (2021)
Heading into his sophomore season, Jaspreet Sanghra was feeling the pressure to live up to the hard expectations Eric White set up for him, and couldn’t find a way to release all his built up stress. Fortunately, the SweatSox and ‘Hub joined forces to create the ultimate (free) pregame playlist, guaranteed to get everyone ready to play ball. The results speak for themselves: Jaspreet finished 5th in the MVP voting this year.
13. City of Ottawa (2004)
In the early 2000s, the City of Ottawa was looking to get more involved with the local amateur baseball community, so they recruited an intelligence agent who went to school in both northern and southern Canada, and had him infiltrate the only baseball league there was, the NCBL.
What we didn’t know at the time was that the spy was none other than SweatSox spare Greg Parnell, who liked what he saw within our organization, and reported back to his superiors that the SweatSox were worthy of their sponsorship.
Parnell personally negotiated a landmark deal that would allow the SweatSox to play on city run fields for free, in exchange for promoting the name of our nation’s capital on the top of our fastly growing website.
As our website began to grow, and I, Shaun Keay, became a bit more edgy, we had to publicly distance ourselves from this sponsorship, so we could fully blossom into this beautiful flower you see before you.
Greg Parnell passed away a few years later, but his legacy will live forever. We still don’t pay for fields.
Thanks GP.
12. Pete & Marty’s (1984-1987)
The first ever SweatSox sponsorship was Pete & Marty’s, all the way back in 1984. Marty Soltys, a great friend of Doug Dorion, was one of Canada’s pioneers of casual and upscale restaurants & bars, so when he asked his good friend if he could bring a few of his baseball teammates to Pete & Marty’s to class up the place, all expenses paid, the SweatSox were in business.
To this day, Marty credits the SweatSox for most of his successes early in his career in the hospitality sector, and later on in his media & entertainment ventures.
Nobody knows what happened to Pete.
R.I.P. Pete.
11. Las Palmas (1989)
After Pete & Marty’s became too big to fail, the SweatSox set their sights on another up-coming business to help grow, in exchange for a little dough. There was a great bidding war for our services, and patronage, ultimately won by Las Palmas, a Mexican Restaurant in the Byward Market.
Las Palmas was so impressed with the SweatSox and our ability to consume, many of the staff actually joined the team, splitting our franchise into 2 different groups: the new Las Palmas Ball Hawks (competitive), and the original Sweat Sox (recreational).
The competitive team went 3-21 then collapsed (as did our sponsorship); the SweatSox went 5-11 and thrived under the continued leadership of Doug Dorion.
10. Whispers (1991-1994)
If any establishment wanted to be something in the early 90’s, they needed to be in bed with the SweatSox, nothing was hotter, or sweatier. When the Las Palmas deal went sideways, the SweatSox were once again open to bids.
Whispers came in hot, offering the SweatSox not only all the beer and tandori wings we could eat, but they’d also listen if we had any great ideas on how to improve their business model. Dorion suggested they do live music, and the rest is history.
9. The Brig Pub (1995-1997)
Our final sponsorship of the 20th century was with the Brig Pub. They came to us nearly bankrupt after a series of bylaw infractions almost shut them down. We took on their name, built their reputation back up, and to this day they’re still alive and kicking.
Ironically, our Brig sponsorship ended shortly before the 1998 season, when they refused to allow an underage I, Shaun Keay, into the bar after hours for my “tryout”. There was nothing more for us to teach them.
8. The Rockway Rattlesnake (2007)
When Josh Ramage joined the team, we told him his league fees were $5,000 (still cheaper than playing for the Red Sox). Josh didn’t know any better back then, so he happily paid up, and even kept making the long drives to pitch in Winchester. We all played for free that year, it was one of our better sponsorships.
7. Summerhays (2018)
Every time the SweatSox go somewhere to eat and drink, but mostly drink, we get asked if we’d like to be sponsored. Unless we truly believe in the product we’re eating or drinking, we’ll respectfully decline; but when Mr. Hays approached us in 2018 about collaborating, it was an easy yes.
It was a sponsorship program unlike any other; what we’d do is collect our receipts throughout the year, then at the end of the season, we’d get a negotiated percentage back in food & beverage credits. Pretty amazing isn’t it, unheard of anywhere else!
We went there after every game (27), and every practice, for a total of 27 visits. We accumulated thousands of dollars for our end of year party, but Josh Ramage, Cory Bond, and I, Shaun Keay, strategically cashed-out when nobody else was there. I brought like 5 full garbage bags of wings home that night, and ate like a king for weeks. Good times.
6. Chapman Mortgages (2003)
With Ray Cuthbert out of the picture, Doug Horner on his way out, and Craig Cornell still a year or two away from his hostile takeover, Chris Chapman used 2003 as an opportunity to promote what a grand jury would later describe as “a high-level money laundering pyramid scheme” on the back of our new mesh jerseys.
It was our first winning season in years; Chapman credits his sponsorship, we say it was our rookies.
For legal purposes, we cannot show a picture of these jerseys.
5. Dovercourt Recreation Center (2014)
After winning our franchise’s 2nd championship in 2013, on a walk-off grand slam vs the Cornwall River Rats, the SweatSox were once again the talk of the town, and everyone once again wanted a piece of us.
Needing a little bit of swag, Dovercourt Recreation Center handed us a briefcase full of money, so we could go buy some team hoodies. In exchange they wanted: literally nothing. Offer accepted.
4. A&W (2006-????)
Now that the SweatSox were in the business of winning championships (2005), we felt it was time to introduce a 2nd award to our inventory. We already had the Doug Dorion Memorial Trophy for the season’s MVP, but we wanted something to give out every night for the individual game MVP.
Mark Dorrington, a friend to both the Allen and Wright families, got them to sponsor our new award, the 2004 A&W Kamloops International Baseball Game MVP Award!
This sponsorship lasted many years, until the award quietly disappeared without anyone ever realizing it. The current whereabouts of the A&W medal remains unknown; add it the SweatSox Unsolved Mystery list:
- Who has the A&W?
- Who secretly ordered those super suicide wings for Cory at Locals?
- Was Delorey actually at Grace O’Malley’s the night Lett walked home?
- Who left Cory’s golf ball on the cart path?
- How did Ross not know that his uncle played for the SweatSox?
- …and the biggie:
3. PetroCan (1988)
The late 80’s of the Ottawa Recreational Baseball League was absolute chaos. We were still a couple of years away from the formation of the National Capital Baseball League, so it really was the wild west for team sponsorship; zero regulation.
Big Oil really wanted in on the men’s recreational league baseball market, and finally broke through when Petro-Canada offered the SweatSox an absolutely ridiculous amount of money to represent their brand, to which management immediately accepted. Sources say that payoff still funds an expense account that only the SweatSox Authority has access to, while the extra money he collects by overcharging us every year goes to his golfing fund.
2. The United State of New Jersey (2013)
The year was 2013, the month was June, the SweatSox were a middle-of-the-pack 6-6-1 just coming off our first ever visit to Cornwall where we learned you don’t actually park in the parking lot, otherwise your vehicle will be broken into and we’ll be chasing hooligans around the town all rainy afternoon. It was probably the lowest our team had been since the 1-win 2001 season.
Our next game was a few days later at Heritage, and that morning out of nowhere we got word that a large package was waiting for us at the post office. Not one to turn down a big package, we swung by to check it out.
It turns out that the great state of New Jersey, led by a sandwich connoisseur somewhere in Hoboken, heard about our struggles, so they had 17 brand new jerseys sent to us to get us back on track.
The SweatSox embraced our new threads, and went on a 15-6 run over the next 3+ months, capped by a walk-off grand slam vs those very same Cornwall River Rats who didn’t tell us where to safely park.
The SweatSox vowed to visit the great state of New Jersey someday as thanks for their timely sponsorship, and sure enough 6 years later we did.
1. Community of Stittsville
There are sponsorships, and there are SPONSORSHIPS, this is the latter.
As the NCBL expanded throughout the 2000’s, both within and (controversially) beyond the National Capital, different communities were getting unprecedented notoriety by being linked to certain teams: Bytown, Kingston, Nepean, Kanata, Winchester, Metcalfe, Rideau, Orleans, and Beckwith, to name a few.
One suburb was left out, but not for long. Stittsville, Ontario wanted to make a monumental impact on the NCBL, so they swung for the fences. Stittsville offered the SweatSox, un-arguably the greatest franchise in the history of the NCBL, 2 actual houses (1 townhouse, 1 detached) if the team would relocate to the west Ottawa community, and assume their name moving forward.
The 6-bed 9-bath townhouse was built first, so I, Shaun Keay, webmaster extraordinaire, took that one. Cory Bond, SweatSox Authority, took the 1-bed 4-bath detached home a few years later. And that is how and why we will forever be known as:
The Stittsville SweatSox
Honourable Mentions: there were a few times over the years where we were closing to picking up a new sponsor, but for one reason or another it didn’t work out. Here are a few of those examples.
A. City of Cornwall (2014)
Cornwall once tried to sponsor the SweatSox, but NCBL rules prohibit sponsoring a team that already owns you.
B. Canadian Cancer Society (2014)
We just didn’t feel right taking their money.
C. National Capital Baseball League (2021)
The NCBL offered to give us a ton of money, but the condition was we all had to quit baseball and go play softball or frisbee or literally anything else. We couldn’t do that. They countered with even more money and just me (Shaun Keay) going away forever, but we had to decline that offer too.
Final Top-14 SweatSox Sponsor Rankings:
- Community of Stittsville
- The United State of New Jersey
- Petro-Can
- A&W
- Dovercourt Recreation Center
- Chapman Mortgages
- Summerhays Grill
- The Rockway Rattlesnake
- The Brig Pub
- Whispers
- Las Palmas
- Pete & Marty’s
- City of Ottawa
- The ‘Hub
- Cory Bond and Kent Johnston
- Dominos Pizza
- Wendy’s