Ready, Set, Soar
One T-Shirt's Journey to Fandom
You’re at your first-ever NBA game. You’re 8 years old. What do you remember?
The score. Not a chance.
Who the opponent was. Probably.
Who won. Getting warmer.
What you wore. Absofreakinglutely.
You either had the jersey ready to go hanging on your closet door for months, you had all the colors of the team incorporated into some piece of your ensemble, or like me, you wore just a plain white tee in the hopes that you would stand out like a sore thumb. That t-shirt cannon you heard stories about… by God it was going to find you and your plain white tee in that crowd, and that t-shirt was going to land in your hands just so, because you deserved an article of clothing that came down to your knees donning those team colors!
But how exactly does a t-shirt get packed into, and launched from said cannon? Who came up with said cannon in the first place?
These are the questions I found my internal dialogue wrestling with at a Timberwolves vs Pacers game recently. So if you’re new here, welcome to a small peek behind the curtain of how my brain works. I bring to light the questions that (probably) not a lot of you are thinking while taking in a game or show, but I’m here to answer them anyway.
So back to that cannon.
The T-shirt cannon was popularized in NBA games in the late '90s by a man who many knew as the Coyote at the San Antonio Spurs. In the daylight, you’d find folks calling him Tim Derk, but to my childhood self and others like me, he was our version of Oprah. Making the concept of ‘You get a shirt, and you get a shirt, and you get a shirt!’ our reality.
He started with surgical tubing. Which is just as plain and boring as it sounds. The tubing used to make slingshots. You’d need multiple individuals, and many hands to make this thing work, and more often than not it didn’t make it very far into the crowd. So Tim started to look at the mechanisms and inner workings of none other than that of a potato launcher.
Considering the game of basketball was invented using peaches and baskets, potatoes and t-shirts just makes sense! Doesn’t it?
You see, since the cannon uses compressed air to propel objects forward with no damage until they meet their target, so he figured one could roll up T-shirts and launch them at high speeds; without compromising the integrity of the Tee, or getting folks hurt.
So he equipped each cannon with an air tank that stored compressed gas. The air is typically pressurized to around 30-100 PSI (pounds per square inch) depending on how far you want to launch the sucker. The T-shirt is then tightly rolled and secured with rubber bands (or sometimes even just plastic wrap) to keep it compact, then loaded into the barrel. Now the barrel is made of your standard PVC, but he specifically designed it to fit the size of a rolled-up Tee.
With the cannon loaded, and screaming fans ready, it’s time to launch.
The cannon has a trigger valve that when pressed, releases a burst of compressed air. The pressurized air rushes into the barrel behind the T-shirt, which then propels the T-shirt forward at high speed; with some launching over 100 feet!
Ideally into the hands of someone like me, but clearly I wasn’t the only one who desperately wanted to get their hands on free swag. The T-shirt cannon became so popular that within just two years of its debut, it became a staple of sports entertainment and spread to other leagues such as the NFL, MLB, and NHL.
So let your inner child feel all the feels again, and test your luck at an upcoming game somewhere. And if you’re lucky enough to snatch one of those flying cotton balls of goodness out of the air, please dear God find me on LinkedIn or Instagram and share with me your glory! I promise I will bask in your happiness with you, even if no one else will.
