The Quad Cities River Bandits held their first-ever Tattoo Night promotion in 2008, in which they somehow convinced 28 fans to get team logo tattoos in exchange for ’09 berm season tickets.

A full write-up of that promotion can be found HERE. I found it truly remarkable that so many people got tattoos, and ended up choosing the promotion as one of the year’s 10 best.

But the River Bandits have shown themselves to be a team that does not rest on past successes. In 2009 they staged another “Tattoo Night”, and this time enticed 42 fans to go under the needle (an increase of 50% over the previous season).

According to my calculations, in which I added one number to another number, that makes 70 residents of the Quad Cities who now sport team logo tattoos. If the club continues to stage this promotion while enjoying an annual growth rate of 50%, then approximately 720 fans will receive tattoos in 2016. Within another decade, the number of fans desiring tattoos will exceed ballpark capacity.

Like humanity itself, this promotion is unsustainable from a long-term perspective. But I’ve learned that very few people care about long-term perspectives. What they do care about are pictures, and I’ve got a couple to share.

A tattoo of a criminally-minded nocturnal woods creature on one’s forearm symbolizes a cunning nature:

   
 
An inter-locking “QC” simply denotes a love for the Quad Cities. Or perhaps Queen Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VII.