Marcus Rivero stared at the pair of cleats for about three hours. He got up, walked away, came back. He envisioned this there — no, not there; how about here?
And then he began with a spur of inspiration, and the creativity that flowed from the custom shoe designer was on Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson’s feet during ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.”
“I started spraying and it came to me, and I just ran with it,” Rivero said.
Rivero, whose alias is Soles By Sir, has created custom cleat and shoe designs for many professional athletes. He completed his latest project with Henderson’s custom cleats. They feature Lego characters glued to the laces, and Rivero said they are the first-ever pair of shoes with Legos incorporated into them.
Rivero received the assignment from ESPN’s Eduardo Pérez, who wanted to give Henderson a 23rd birthday gift. The shoes came as a surprise to Henderson at first. When he saw the Lego box packaging, he assumed the gift would be something for him to build.
Instead, Henderson wore them on the field during the Orioles’ 11-2 loss to the Texas Rangers.
“When I opened it up, I was blown away by them,” Henderson said. “They’re unreal. They’re pretty awesome. The Lego people on the shoestrings, I was told they will stay on. When we’re playing out there tonight, if something falls off, I may have to get it. But I was told they would stay on.”
The design was “very hard,” Rivero said. He watched videos of Henderson to understand his personality, and one of his takeaways was how much Henderson enjoyed Legos. So Rivero made Legos the central piece of his design.
On the side of one cleat is a Lego version of Henderson in uniform. On another is the Orioles logo. Along the laces are Lego characters, including a Star Wars pilot and firefighter.
“It’s very hard, because you’ve got to think outside the box,” Rivero said. “It’s not like there’s an instruction manual for that type of stuff. I just started experimenting and then I got stuff that would work, and I would get it on there and make it cool and practical and wearable, which is the hard part. And the final result seems to be a hit.”
Henderson wound up changing cleats after the third of four strikeouts, although he laughed that it wasn’t due to his performance. On a diving play in the sixth inning, some of the Lego pieces fell off (he later found two of them the next inning in the grass).
Henderson wanted to save the cleats rather than risk losing a piece.
“Even the cleat change didn’t seem to work tonight,” Henderson said with a laugh.
One thing that struck Rivero — and something he hopes is evident with the design — is how multifaceted athletes are. Henderson is one of the best baseball players in the majors, but he also has interests away from the field.
“Typically, you see baseball players, you only see them play baseball and you think that’s what they live and breathe,” Rivero said. “But it’s really cool when they do something the rest of the public does themselves.”
Henderson’s play has reached a new level this season. He has 26 homers and a 1.000 on-base-plus-slugging percentage.
Now, his cleat game is stepping up to match.
“It’s kind of cool to see how creative people are and being able to make something like that,” Henderson said. “I would’ve never been able to think of that, so just to see people be able to do that is unreal, and shoutout to Soles By Sir, who made them.”
