Ramon Eijkemans pointed me to a script written by Stuart Langridge. This unobtrusive table sorting script was awesome, offering sort mechanisms for text, numbers, dates and currencies, by simply adding an external script to a page and a class to a table!
However, it lacked a few things, most importantly: support for alternated row classes. Working on it more, I found there were a few bugs to it too. So I started adapting it. At first there were just a few changes. Now more and more e-mails with feature requests are coming in, and I have started versioning my table sorting script.
Cool JavaScript efftcts for sorting tables. Check out the example.
Update: My point is that this script is more than just an eyecandy; this is practical.