Friday, May 9, 2008

Dr. Seuss Enterprises...

From Jayson Stark on espn.com

This week's coveted Greed is Bad award goes out to the rats in the hats at Dr. Seuss Enterprises.

Their crime? Forcing the well-meaning Lake Elsinore Storm, of the California League, to pull the plug on last week's brilliant Dr. Seuss Night promotion.

Why'd that happen? No, not because the Storm couldn't locate enough green eggs. Because the team couldn't locate enough green cash to convince the grinches at Dr. Seuss Enterprises to drop their threatened legal action.

Only one positive development came out of that cancellation -- one of the great press releases in modern baseball history, as penned by Matt Dompe, the Storm's director of game operations, and assistant GM Alan Benevides. Here goes:

The Padres affiliate, the Lake Elsinore Storm
Tried to put on a promotion that wasn't the Norm
We called it Dr. Seuss Night on our website
But something about that didn't seem right

Dr. Seuss Enterprises didn't see it as funny
They said we could do it but we didn't have the money
They didn't appreciate our publicity ploys
So we have to inform all the sad girls and boys
Through the face of it all we thought we'd persist
Until we were served with a cease and desist
The theme has been cancelled but the game will go on
Perhaps it wouldn't matter if we were in Taiwan

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