Eternal Image Inc (fka ETNLQ)

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more elaborate article:

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_4695fc3b-a35f-5aea-bf8f-54bcfbaaccb6.html

Caskets are final show of baseball loyalty
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By Dave Seminara • Special to the Post-Dispatch | Posted: Friday, August 13, 2010 12:15 am |


Aug. 12, 2010 -- Eternal Image began selling caskets with major league baseball themes in 2008. The casket's price is $3,500.

Chase Shaw was a loyal Cardinals fan. He would often chide his father, Steve, for abandoning their post in front of the television if the Cards fell behind late in a game. "He'd come into my bedroom and say, 'You better turn it back on, they're getting ready to rally,'" Steve Shaw said. "He liked to repeat Mike Shannon's home run call. He'd say, 'Get up baby, get up, get up!'"

Chase Shaw died in a car accident in December, at age 22, near the Saints Avenue Café he managed in Canton, Mo. "As soon as the tragedy happened, there was no doubt in my mind that I'd get him a Cardinals casket because that's what he would've wanted," Steve Shaw said. Chase Shaw was laid to rest in a Cardinals jersey and hat, with a Cardinals bat and ball inside of a Cardinals casket, which was placed inside a burial vault adorned with the Cardinals logo, in a plot near their home in Hannibal, Mo. "If we could've gotten a Cardinals logo on his headstone, I would've done that, too," Shaw said. "We live the Cardinals."

As the Cardinals and Cubs resume their rivalry today at Busch Stadium, fans will reopen their never-ending battle for bragging rights. But while nearly every aspect of the rivalry can be easily quantified, one question eludes easy answers: Which team has the most loyal fans?

Not even Bill James, the godfather of sabermetrics, could invent a statistic to measure fan loyalty; but surely the sales of team logo caskets, urns and burial vaults are as good a measure as any to quantify fan loyalty and passion. In 2008, a Michigan-based company called Eternal Image began selling caskets for $3,500, which come complete with mini bats for handles, and urns bearing Major League Baseball team logos for $799.

According to Nick Popravsky, the company's vice president of sales and marketing, team logo casket sales were up 32 percent in 2009. The company's sales of MLB urns and caskets are nearing 3,000. And while there may be no Cubs-Cardinals pennant race in 2010, the two teams are neck and neck for the lead in National League casket sales.

"We started out with just five teams to see if the market would accept this, and they have. People love it," Popravsky said. The company has expanded its product line to include caskets for all 30 MLB teams and the kind of headstone medallions that weren't available when Chase Shaw died.

But why do fans want to take their team allegiances with them into eternity?

"This is for the die-hard fans — excuse the pun," said Hal Wilkes, director of the Christy Vault Co., which distributes MLB caskets and urns. "People take their sports loyalties with them — even to the grave. This is the ultimate final purchase for a passionate baseball fan."

With 10 titles, 17 pennants and 23 playoff appearances, it's easy to understand how the Cardinals command cradle-to-grave and beyond loyalty from their fans. But why would Cubs fans, tormented by their team's futility in the living realm, want to carry that frustrating allegiance into the hereafter?

"People are more loyal to their sports teams than they are to their spouses," Wilkes said. "It's a second religion — it's sports worship. It's eternal optimism."

Dennis Mancari, a lifelong Cubs fan, is the creator of Beyond the Vines, a final resting place where the ashes of eternally optimistic Cubs fans can be interred inside Cubs urns in a 24-foot-long ivy-covered brick wall. Mancari sought to create the kind of environment people would actually enjoy visiting, a warm antidote to a typical mausoleum.

Herb and Evelyn Lathrope of Arlington Heights, Ill., were the first two die-hards to reserve their places in the wall. Herb died in 2009, but Evelyn, now 85, is still hoping to see the Cubs win the World Series before she takes her place next to her husband at Beyond the Vines.

"We're always hopeful," she said. "Once a Cubs fan, always a Cubs fan. It's not just till death do us part."

Lathrope, who was at Wrigley Field in 1945 to witness the Cubs most recent World Series appearance, sees nothing unusual about seeking Cub fan immortality; maintaining a connection to the team is important because 'sooner or later they will win, and you want to be a part of that."

For Lathrope, there is no debate about which team has the most loyal fans.

"Cubs fans are more loyal — we haven't won in so long, but we keep hanging in there. It's easy to be a Cardinals fan — they win!"

But tell that to Cardinals fan Joan Benson, a teacher at Holy Rosary Middle School in Monroe City, Mo., who already has reserved her Cardinals casket. "I'm in no rush, but when my time comes, absolutely, that's what I want to be buried in," she said.

"The casket has a Cardinals logo in the middle," Benson said. "As a loyal Catholic, the crucifix should really be in the middle, but I'll have to put the crucifix on one side, and the Virgin Mary on the other. Religion is first, then family, then the Cardinals."

While MLB caskets, urns and vaults are proving to be surprisingly popular, the NHL, NBA and NFL have resisted the idea, even as the NCAA has allowed more than 200 colleges and universities to license their logo to casket manufacturers. Critics might accuse MLB of exploiting the most devout fans by offering pricey products, but for those coping with a devastating loss, reaffirming a loved one's allegiance to a cherished team is a way to celebrate their life.

When Larissa Rzemienski's husband, Ben Maldonado, died in his sleep last year of a brain cyst at age 34, she knew right away that she wanted his ashes to be placed in a Cubs urn at Beyond the Vines, inside the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago.

"He believed in God, but he didn't go to church," she said. "He did watch the Cubs religiously and his mood usually depended on whether the Cubs were winning."

Putting Maldonado to rest in a place he would have loved provided comfort to her at a time when she was wracked with grief. "If we had done a traditional funeral, it would have been more somber, and it wouldn't have had as much meaning. This just seemed right," she said.

Steve Shaw also found comfort in paying tribute to his son's greatest passion during his family's most trying time. "I was thrilled with the dignity of how we buried him, because I know it's what he would've wanted," he said.

No one knows how the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry plays out beyond the grave, but many fans of both teams contend that their team loyalty comes with no expiration date.

Opening Day this year was particularly difficult for Shaw, who also plans to be buried in a Cardinals casket, because it was the first he had experienced in many years without his son at his side. But in death, his son taught him something about being a loyal Cardinals fan. "Now when they're behind, I keep watching, because Chase always used to tell me I gave up too easily. He never gave up."