Coolest Little League team ever! Rock band The Black Keys sponsor team in their hometown
Rock band The Black Keys have the back of one Little League team. Literally.
The Grammy-winning band — best known for songs such as "Gold on the Ceiling" and "Tighten Up" — sponsored a team this season in the West Akron Baseball League in Ohio, a league in which the band's drummer Patrick Carney and guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach used to play as kids.
In the process, this collaboration created one of the coolest shirseys that the world of under-10 baseball has ever seen — with "The Black Keys" scrawled across the back, looking just like it does on the band's "El Camino" album cover.
The team, the Orioles, was made up of 6-8 year-olds who went undefeated in their league, according to an MTV story. The Keys kids played against teams sponsored by restaurants and funeral homes, the typical youth baseball stuff.
It makes us wonder if other famous Akronites — we're looking at you, LeBron James and dudes from Devo — will follow The Black Keys' lead, sponsor teams and make the West Akron Baseball League the most famous in the U.S.
The Black Keys got on board after the Orioles coach, Steve Milkovich, reached out to Carney directly, because he and Milkovich's brother were friends as kids. Sponsorship cost $300, which the band jumped at.
Here's more via MTV:
"It's crazy now, people are contacting the league from everywhere, asking to buy one of the jerseys," Milkovich said. "And that's so great, but what I think is the most amazing is that the band never asked for anything, not even to be recognized. They just did it because they're good guys, they remember playing in the league. It was just 'Here's the check, go out and win some games.'"
Demand for the shirts has been so great that Milkovich said the band is considering selling limited-edition Black Keys baseball jerseys, with all proceeds going directly to WABL. He also joked that, given the amount of attention they've already brought to the league, it probably won't be all that long until WABL names a field in the Keys' honor.
The bow on top of all this? The Black Keys promised to autograph every kid's jersey after the season was over.
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