Pot, Kettle: Meet Phillies

Today’s Daily News reports on, uh, a blog postthat was taken down after people got upset.

The blog post in question was by phillyBurbs.com’s Dave Ralis, who started selling wife beater — if the only media you’ve ever seen is this site, a wife beater is a tank top undershirt — t-shirts with Brett Myers’ number on them. (Not the one at right: that’s from The Illadelph, although nothing was being sold there.)

I saw the wife beater post and Cafepress store yesterday, and I decided not to write about it because, uhm, it’s the stupidest, easiest joke in the history of the world. Want to know how stupid and easy it was? I didn’t even make it.

Naturally, however, the Phillies are upset:

“It makes me sick,” one Phillie told the People Paper’s Marcus Hayes when the player learned of the site’s offering.

“The Phillies find it extremely offensive that any person or business would make fun of the very serious issue of domestic abuse much less attempt to make money from it,” the team said in a statement on its Web site.

Ahh, yes. Some dude on a blog making fun of Myers with a tasteless joke is way worse than sending Myers out to pitch the day after he was arrested for beating his wife because he’s your best pitcher.

Personally, I think the Phillies are just pissed they didn’t think of the idea first and weren’t getting a cut of the sales.

Update: phillyBurbs.com has posted an apology. I’ll throw it after the jump.

Dave Ralis’ Home Turf [phillyBurbs.com]
Phillies tire of alienating their few remaining fans; make belated effort to save face [The Illadelph]
Dan Gross | Newspapers’ ‘wife beater’ clothing sparks outrage [Daily News]

MESSAGE TO OUR READERS:

For a short time on Wednesday, June 28, a blog post on phillyburbs.com offered merchandise for sale that made reference to the story involving the arrest of Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Brett Myers.

Though our intent was to find humor in a difficult situation, some in the community had negative reactions to our content. We made a decision to remove the blog post and all content related to it.

None of the items described were actually sold, and we do not intend to offer them for sale in the future.

Our actions were not intended to offend anyone in our community, and we apologize to anyone who may have been offended.

Bob Kellagher
Director of Interactive Media
PhillyBurbs.com