In an unexplained blunder that many baseball fans would call doomful, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a huge Macy’s ad on the back of the main section today congratulating the Phillies for being back-to-back world series champions.
This comes the morning after Game 4’s crushing defeat by the Yankees, putting the Phillies behind 3-1 in the series.
The ad, which takes up most of the back page, states, “Congratulations Phillies! Back-to-Back Champs.” With a photo of a T-shirt bearing the words, “Philadelphia Phillies 2009 World Series Champions,” Macy’s directs Philadelphians to show their Phillies pride and “celebrate their World Series Win” by buying a shirt.
Oy vey.
Baseball being one of the most superstitious sports there is, the ad and its grey T-shirt loom over the back page and the Phillies like an ominous cloud.
Though it sent out an apology for the error, the Inquirer refused to comment on how it happened. We don’t know if the paper mistakenly ran the Macy’s ad early or if the ad was meant to run Monday morning.
But even if it was scheduled to run, there’s no excuse. It should have been changed.
Anyone with knowledge of the ins and outs of a newspaper knows that it’s the job of a copyeditor to go through each layout page, making sure editorial and advertising copy are grammatically and contextually correct.
Whoever was in charge of proofing page A20 was obviously asleep at the keyboard. Or, great conspiracy theorists might say that there was a Yankee fan on the Inquirer staff:
Next to the offending ad is an article that should have the headline “Limbaugh, Axelrod Trade Jobs.” Instead, the second blooper on the same page reads: “Limbaugh, Alexrod Trade Jobs.” As in, Alex Rodriguez, not David Axelrod.
Somebody had the Yankees on his mind.
