Philly Paper Isn't Into Waiting Around For Actual World Series Results

Excited for the fifth game of the World Series on Monday night? Sorry to burst your bubble, but the cat is already out of the bag. The Phillies win. They win Game 6 on Wednesday night, too. And in an epic battle of baseball goodness that your grandchildren will tire of hearing you talk about, they win Game 7 and repeat as world champions.

I'm not making predictions here, people, this is all true. Why else would the Philadelphia Inquirer be running ads, via PhillyTalk.com, advertising a sale on T-shirts and other memorabilia celebrating the momentous occasion hours after Johnny Damon and Alex Rodriguez teamed up to beat Brad Lidge and give the Yankees a 3-1 lead in the World Series?

Oh, right. It's because someone in the advertising department drank way too much on Halloween and screwed up royally sometime on Sunday. Somewhere Harry Truman is smiling and beating Thomas Dewey all over again.

The Inquirer has apologized for the mistake and reminded their readers that Macy's, the store offering the fanciful attire, is "a great corporate citizen, supporter of this region and our sports teams." I bet they claim to be big supporters of Christmas, too, but we all know what happened when Santa Claus tried to get a job at the store.

It's easy to rip on the paper for dropping the ball on proofreading the ads during such a heated time in the city, but given the economic state of affairs for newspapers it's easy to understand why they wouldn't turn down an advertisement no matter how fraudulent the claims in it. They've gotten so much attention for this foul-up that it is easy to imagine the Washington Post running come-ons from local businesses offering specials celebrating the 2010 World Champion Nationals or several of the nation's newspapers running ads from the Franklin Mint for a limited edition set of plates commemorating Sidney Ponson's third Cy Young Award.