In the pantheon of sports-related accomplishments, perhaps the one most rarely accomplished is going out on top. Freshly awash in the glory of the long-awaited ESPN documentary ‘The Last Dance’, mere weeks after watching my second favorite athlete of all time (apologies to Touchdown Tommy, but nobody will ever supplant Larry Bird) Tom Brady depart the Patriots for a tertiary-at-best franchise in the bowels of Florida in the Tampa Bucs, I am reminded with stark realness just how infrequently even the best of the best walk away without a regrettable final chapter.

Perhaps comparing a rather short-lived, eminently niche, sports-adjacent brand whose main focus was clever vintage style t-shirts to two athletes who are easily within the argument of their respective sports’ best ever performers is a bit of a reach. But such is my affinity for the now-defunct No Mas NYC. And unlike MJ, and, sadly, TFB, (whom I REALLY hope didn’t target Tampa Bay because of the TB link…please, oh please), these dudes left the game on top. Relatively speaking of course.

Started in 2004 by Chris Isenberg, a sports fan of my own, what I consider golden, generation of the genre, No Mas is of course a reference to Roberto Duran’s famous utterance of submission at the lightning quick hands of Sugar Ray Leonard during boxing’s 80s heyday. The name perfectly captures, based on what the brand embodies, what I presume is the dichotemy of Isenberg’s sports fandom: equal parts rabid, witty, and minutiae-oriented. And both the brand’s and the man’s foray into multimedia exhibit a marketer’s savvy and a storyteller’s eye that is appreciated well beyond the merch: captured perfectly in not only the OG animated posters once for sale on the site (what I envision Maurikami’s art would look like if he grew up obsessed with wax packs) as well as in its Sundance Award-Winning feature documentary on Doc Ellis’s LSD-driven no-hitter, itself the apex of No Mas’s stock in trade: the funky, imperfect backstories so often buried in the sports fan experience.

In other words, ephemera. Any brand that focuses on the somewhat random places, spaces, and faces that only an eagle eye would catch (gift shop t-shirts worn by boxing greats of semi-famous resorts and training venues, for instance) is pretty much right in my wheelhouse. But, beyond that, the wit is what first caught my eye. Familiar sporting fonts of the 70s and 80s, but with clever, subtle plays on those logos (a ‘Pablo’ t-shirt rendered in the San Diego Padres signature swinging 70s font – a nod to the cocaine-soaked antics of that era’s baseball scene, certainly in Southern California, for instance), or hats with a similar design vernacular (I loved their Yankees Reggie Jackson .44 Caliber hat’s simple presentation and perfectly rendered serif-heavy number font so much that I rock it regularly…and I hate the fucking Yankees).

Another favorite t-shirt features one of No Mas’s central figures (the brand is rather NYC-centric, but in a very compelling and interesting manner), Darryl Strawberry, in a graphic from one of my favorite pieces of sporting ephemera ever – the once-ubiquitous Mims-Bandz. For the uninitiated, these were wristbands featuring a cartoon rendering of the bust of its MLB player wearer, with an, in this case, utterly tragic and equally ironic message of “Say No to Drugs!”.

Beyond the tongue in cheek nature of the contradiction as it relates to Straw, perhaps THE figurehead of what was an incredibly compelling and tough not to root for group of mid-80s Mets and an other worldly talent now walking cautionary tale, what makes this tee so perfect is No Mas’s understanding of an element that DID in fact make this graphic unique (Straw certainly wasn’t the only player to sport Mimz Bands yet also get busted for coke) – that for some reason it included a cartoon drawing of an actual strawberry in the aft of the graphic. Like, why?!

But what caught me first and foremost was their Rated Rookie shirt. Few logo icons grabbed me by the throat as a kid quite like this graphic, located in the lower right corner of Donruss baseball cards of my youth, a clear indication that you may be sitting on a goldmine, depending on how this dude’s career plays out. And at first glimpse, that split second of hope that it was Jose Canseco (and not, Eric Plunk or something), was precisely the magic of wax packs. Rookie Cards were like heroin to 10 year old me – a fleeting hit of endorphins, a dragon briefly ridden and heavily pursued from there forward, often at the expense of my hard-earned chore money. That Rated Rookie badge held promise within it. And to recognize that enough to put it on a t-shirt and sell it, well these are dudes with whom I’d have liked to hang. Given what they are up to now (see below), they still are.

Alas, for me, the brand tagline – The Thrill of Victory, The Ecstasy of Defeat – speaks to its rather sudden (regrettably) and unannounced (thankfully, in retrospect) downfall and disappearance. It was a site I peeped regularly, and shopped often, because it was always SO compelling (they are content-makers at heart, which manifests in what has become of their fate since folding No Mas, focusing their efforts entirely on their super dope brand agency Doubleday & Cartwright, and their impeccable sport-focused analog magazine Victory Journal). But I didn’t buy nearly as much stuff as I should have, and I kick myself daily for not having done so.

The items I was able to cop largely represent another favorite element of No Mas’s positioning: its rooting in the sweet science of boxing. Boxing is a sport whose best days are, firmly and farly, in its rearview, for reasons too numerous to count. But when it was big, there was nothing bigger. And beyond the larger than life fighters and promoters and trainers and other personalities the sport offered en masse, there were so many regional, middling-at-best, yet in their own right iconic (to a minutiae-focused nerd anyway, myself included among them) institutions and locations and events whose names and logos and profiles have long since faded from the public eye. No Mas reps those. Heavy.

For me, that about melts my heart. My father was a big, rather unexpected boxing fan, having been in all of two fights in his life. He wasn’t vocal about fighting, he wasn’t the stock-in-trade boxing fan. He taught me two things about fighting: first, never fight anyone who has less to lose than you do, and second, he made me feel like I was so gifted in so many ways, thereby ensuring just about anyone out there would have less to lose than I would were something to go sideways in a fight. Never fight unless you absolutely have to. And even then, do everything you can to avoid it.

But even given that (maybe even because of that) I was transfixed by boxing of that era (80s – early 90s). And I used to adore sitting by his side when he watched a fight, especially one featuring his favorite – a local guy who happens to be, for my money, one of the pound for pound greatest ever to do it, and victim of the biggest and most blatant robbery in boxing history – Marvelous Marvin Hagler. But beyond that, the big time fights were so numerous in that era, and the stories so rich – it is such a clean encapsulation of what we have lost as consumers in so many facets of our lives in the era of consolidation and limited consumer choice. Now, in a rather binary world, neither Heads nor Tails have to work too hard to catch our attention with anything beyond finding a way to be in our face more frequently.

In that era, even small regional resorts in the Catskills had a shining moment or two as the getaway HQ for a middleweight contender training for an upcoming shot at the belt, and Vegas Strip also-rans also got a moment to shine. Champs wore rinky dink cotton t-shirts and nondescript gray sweatpants during sparring sessions, sporting hand-designed logos whose imperfections spoke to an era before everything every athlete does is focus grouped and pinpointed and “dropped” via an app for a spend-thirsty public to eat up, yet rarely to actually appreciate.

So in that sense, I am kind of glad they are gone. They never went the route of selling ultimately third-rate knock-offs of their own original, truly inspiring designs, for $7.99 with a coupon at your local Kohl’s. They never tried to do anything capturing the athlete marketing of the current era, which itself is in many ways the epitome of everything No Mas would never have featured (honestly, if one more athlete/SportsCenter anchor tries to push the “First Initial, Last Initial, Jersey Number” as a clever nickname/athlete icon, I may hang myself). And unlike sneakers, and “sneakerheads” – as truly played out a term as has ever been coined – they stopped before they ever blew up beyond those who truly appreciate who they were (are?) in their souls.

Ergo, the Ecstasy of Defeat. Would I love to be able to get my hands on a few more iconic items? Certainly. Do I wish I had done more as either a consumer or a professional to to get closer to the brand and support them more, maybe even work there? For sure. But ultimately, as a fan, I would much rather have never seen MJ in a goddamn Wizards jersey (awful color scheme and logo package aside). Which is to say nothing of the looming several seasons long vomit-fest that appears to be at hand as a fan of Tom Brady.

Sometimes, it’s time. No mas, No Mas? In this case, in the words of Señor Spielbergo: “Es bueno.”