Hearts on their sleeves True Blue fans demonstrate team devotion with homemade jerseys By: Ben Waldman Posted: 7:00 PM CST Friday, Nov. 18, 2022

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/11/2022 (671 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Football is a game of merchandise and anyone can play.

The burly giants who clash at the offensive line wear the same blue-and-gold jerseys as the little old ladies sitting in Section 215, who wear the same tuques as the bare-chested men the next row over, whose torsos spell out B-O-M-B-E-R-S in capital letters. Even the tiny baby in the endzone is swaddled tightly in the team’s colours.

To be a fan of a professional sports club like the Winnipeg Blue Bombers — on the cusp of its third consecutive Grey Cup appearance, on the heels of two long-awaited victories — is to commit oneself to the bit, which for some means a trip to the official team store.

For others, to be a fan is to unfurl a ball of goldenrod acrylic yarn and make a piece of merchandise that is unique.

They know the secret. The best merchandise is rarely bought, but made to be given, sometimes to oneself, but more often to others — a neighbour, a colleague, a football-mad son-in-law.

Go into the stands at any Bomber game and you will see some piece of Bomberabilia that is one-of-one. Each one has a story of fandom to tell.

In the 1980s, a health-care aide named Theresa Parkes was enjoying a quiet shift at the hospital in Selkirk when a co-worker pulled out her non-medical needles. “We used to knit on the night shift,” she says. Around that time, she started dating a man who had a predilection for Joe Poplawski and Dieter Brock. Parkes knew what to make: his-and-hers sweaters, in acrylic blue-and-gold wool. They wore them often.

But when the team struggled, and when their kids grew up, Parkes lost track of the club. “Regrettably, I took those sweaters apart,” she says. But a funny thing about success: in the early 2000s, when exciting players like receiver Milt Stegall, quarterback Khari Jones and running back Charles Roberts starred for the Bombers, Theresa Parkes started knitting a new sweater, based on a pattern from the Mary Maxim company, with a football player on the back and Stegall’s No. 85 on the shoulder. She will be wearing it on Sunday.

She hasn’t made her husband one of his own. “Well, he hasn’t asked.”

Fair enough.

Had he not already known he’d met his match in Pam, Brian Bachewich was convinced when his mother-in-law Fern Holstein gave the young couple a gift in the late 1970s: a pair of personalized Bombers’ sweaters, knit with the numbers of two of their favourite players, John Helton and Rick House. They still wear them, to games at the stadium, to watch the Grey Cup with friends, or just to the grocery store.

“I like wearing it out when I go shopping,” says Brian Bachewich. “I want it to be visible.”

Rick Carter is the rare Blue Bomber fan who can say he competed for a spot in the lineup. The year was 1987 — or was it 1988? He can’t remember exactly. But Carter, an injured former Bisons linebacker, had been hired by MTN TV, a brand-new station in Portage la Prairie. The network had an interesting idea for an hour-long feature documentary.

“The shtick was that a former Bison blew up his knee so he couldn’t achieve his dream of playing for the Bombers, which was actually true,” says Carter. George Plimpton by way of Manitoba. They called it Camp True Blue.

“I went to (former Bomber coach) Cal Murphy, who went to the same church, and he said, ‘Sure.’ Cal realized it would basically be an hour-long commercial for the Bombers. He was smart.”

While Carter was vying for a spot, his wife and sons were tuned into the team’s exploits; down the street in River Heights, Carter’s wife found a nice woman who loved to knit. She gave the woman the pattern, and by autumn, the Carter boys had their own Bombers sweaters: two with No. 63 for Carter’s former teammate and Bomber lineman Chris Walby, and one with No. 13, for the MTN TV channel.

Carter looked for his adult-sized sweater a while back. “My eldest surreptitiously borrowed it,” he says. Ben Carter will be wearing it on Sunday.

When Jocelyn Best’s daughter Bowie was born in August, she didn’t have much choice over her football fandom: her parents were married at IG Field. In her inaugural season, Bowie attended five Bomber home games, including the thrilling win in the western finals. For those cold fall games, Bowie can call an option: she can either wrap herself in a blue and gold blanket crocheted by her aunt, or an embroidered one from her great-aunt. She has two jerseys, too.

The best merchandise story, however, belongs to Geoff Ritchie.

As a kid in Thunder Bay, Ritchie looked west for a team to call his own, and quickly fell for the Blue Bombers of the 1990s. “I cried in 1992 and 1993,” says the 40-year-old delivery man, recalling the two straight years the team made it to the Grey Cup only to be defeated.

His mother, Heather, remembered those tears. So she made him a custom blue-and-gold crewneck, with an eight on the right sleeve, a five on the left and Milt Stegall’s No. 85 on the back. Ritchie, who now lives in Winnipeg, yearned for an opportunity to wear it when the Blue Bombers made up for his adolescent tears.

In 2007, with the Blue Bombers set to face the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Toronto for the Grey Cup, Ritchie packed his sweater and headed to the big city for the big game. Before kickoff, Ritchie decided to take in the view from the observation floor of the CN Tower, 342 metres up in the Ontario sky.

A man noticed his sweater. “I’ll give you $500 for that,” he offered.

Ritchie shook his head. The man raised to $600. Ritchie shook his head. “Seven-hundred?” Ritchie shook his head. One last offer. “Eight-hundred bucks.”

“I can’t do it, sorry. It’s a one-of-a-kind sweater,” Ritchie said. “And my mom would kill me.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com